Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Angus, Associate Professor in Digital Communication, Queensland University of Technology

On January 13 the Australian Financial Review reported Google had removed some Australian news content from its search results for some local users.

Speaking to the Guardian, a Google spokesperson confirmed the company was “running a few experiments that will each reach about 1% of Google Search users in Australia to measure the impacts of news businesses and Google Search on each other”.

So what are these “experiments”? And how concerned should we be about Google’s actions?

Engineering our attention

Google’s experiment (which is supposed to run until early February) involves displaying an “alternative” news website ranking for certain Australian users — at least 160,000, according to The Guardian.

A Google spokesperson told The Conversation the experiment didn’t prevent users (being experimented on) from accessing a news story. Rather, they would not discover the story through Search and would have to access it another way, such as directly on a publisher’s website.

Google’s experiment is a form of “A/B testing”, which classically involves dividing a population randomly in half — into groups A and B — and subjecting each group to a different “stimulus”.

For example, in the case of web design, the two groups may be served different web layouts. This could be done to test changes to layout, the colour scheme or any other element.

Performance in A/B testing is judged on a range of factors, such as which links are clicked first, or the average time spent on a page. If group A perused the site longer than group B, the modification tested on group A may be considered favourable.

In Google’s case, we don’t know the motivation behind the tests. But we do know a small subset of users received different results to the majority and were not alerted.

The experiment has resulted in the promotion of dubious news sources over trusted ones, some of which have been known to publish disinformation (which intends to mislead) and misinformation (false claims that are spread regardless of intent).

Read more: The ACCC is suing Google for misleading millions. But calling it out is easier than fixing it

When asked about this ranking, Google’s spokesperson said it was a “single anecdotal screenshot” and the experiment didn’t “remove results that link to official government departments and agencies”.

Intent to manipulate

A/B testing is a widespread practice. It can range from being fairly benign — such as to determine the best location for an advertisement banner — to much more invasive, such as Facebook’s infamous mood experiment.

In January 2012, Facebook conducted an experiment on 700,000 users without their knowledge or explicit consent. It adjusted users’ feeds to artificially boost either positive or negative news content.

One reported aim, according to Facebook’s own researchers, was to examine whether emotional states could spread from user to user on the platform. Results were reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Following the report’s publication, Facebook’s “experiment” was widely condemned by academics, journalists and the public as ethically dubious. It had a specific objective to emotionally manipulate users and didn’t obtain informed consent.

Similarly, it’s unlikely users caught in the midst of Google’s Australian news experiment would realise it.

And while the direct risk to those being tested may seem lower than with Facebook’s mood experiment, tweaking news results on Google Search introduces its own set of risks. As research my colleagues and I has shown, platforms and news media both play a large role in spreading conspiracy theories.

Google tried to downplay the significance of the experiment, noting that it conducts “tens of thousands of experiments in Google Search” each year.

But this doesn’t excuse the company from scrutiny. If anything, it’s even more concerning.

Imagine if a police officer pulled you over for speeding and you said: “Well, I speed thousands of times each year, so why should I pay a fine just this one time I’ve been caught?”

If this is just one experiment among of tens of thousands, as Google has admitted, in what other ways have we been manipulated in the past? Without basic disclosures, it’s difficult to know.

A history of non-disclosure

This isn’t the first time Google has been caught experimenting on users without adequate disclosure. In 2018, the company released Google Duplex, a speech-enabled digital assistant that could purportedly make restaurant and other personal service bookings on a user’s behalf.

In the Duplex demos, Google played audio of an AI-enabled speech agent making bookings via conversations with real service workers. What was missing from the calls, however, was a disclosure that the agent opening the call was a bot, not a human.

Critics questioned the deceptiveness of the technology, given its mimicry of human speech.

Google’s controversial dismissal in December of world-leading AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru (former co-lead of its ethical AI team) cast further shade over the company’s internal culture.

What needs to change?

Digital media platforms including Google, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon (among others) exert enormous power over our lives. They also have vast political influence.

It’s no coincidence Google’s news ranking experiment took place against the backdrop of the escalating news media bargaining code debate, wherein the federal government wants Google and Facebook to negotiate with Australian news providers to pay for using their content.

Google’s spokesperson confirmed the experiment is “directly connected to the need to gather information for use in arbitration proceedings, should the code become law”.

Read more: Google’s ‘open letter’ is trying to scare Australians. The company simply doesn’t want to pay for news

While users benefit from the services big tech provides, we need to appreciate we’re more than mere consumers of these services. The data we forfeit are essential input for the massive algorithmic machinery that runs at the core of enterprises such as Google.

The result is what digital media scholars call an “algorithmic culture”. We feed these machines our data and in the process tune them towards our tastes. Meanwhile, they feed us back more things to consume, in a giant human-machine algorithmic loop.

Until recently, we have been uncritical participants in these algorithmic loops and experiments, willing to use “free” services in exchange for our data. But we need to rethink our relationship with platforms and must hold them to a higher standard of accountability.

Governments should mandate minimum standards of disclosure for platforms’ user testing. A/B testing by platforms can still be conducted properly with adequate disclosures, oversight and opt-in options.

In the case of Google, to “do the right thing” would be to adopt a higher standard of ethical conduct when it comes to user testing.

– ref. Google is leading a vast, covert human experiment. You may be one of the guinea pigs – https://theconversation.com/google-is-leading-a-vast-covert-human-experiment-you-may-be-one-of-the-guinea-pigs-154178

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Angus, Associate Professor in Digital Communication, Queensland University of Technology

On January 13 the Australian Financial Review reported Google had removed some Australian news content from its search results for some local users.

Speaking to the Guardian, a Google spokesperson confirmed the company was “running a few experiments that will each reach about 1% of Google Search users in Australia to measure the impacts of news businesses and Google Search on each other”.

So what are these “experiments”? And how concerned should we be about Google’s actions?

Engineering our attention

Google’s experiment (which is supposed to run until early February) involves displaying an “alternative” news website ranking for certain Australian users — at least 160,000, according to The Guardian.

A Google spokesperson told The Conversation the experiment didn’t prevent users (being experimented on) from accessing a news story. Rather, they would not discover the story through Search and would have to access it another way, such as directly on a publisher’s website.

Google’s experiment is a form of “A/B testing”, which classically involves dividing a population randomly in half — into groups A and B — and subjecting each group to a different “stimulus”.

For example, in the case of web design, the two groups may be served different web layouts. This could be done to test changes to layout, the colour scheme or any other element.

Performance in A/B testing is judged on a range of factors, such as which links are clicked first, or the average time spent on a page. If group A perused the site longer than group B, the modification tested on group A may be considered favourable.

In Google’s case, we don’t know the motivation behind the tests. But we do know a small subset of users received different results to the majority and were not alerted.

The experiment has resulted in the promotion of dubious news sources over trusted ones, some of which have been known to publish disinformation (which intends to mislead) and misinformation (false claims that are spread regardless of intent).

Read more: The ACCC is suing Google for misleading millions. But calling it out is easier than fixing it

When asked about this ranking, Google’s spokesperson said it was a “single anecdotal screenshot” and the experiment didn’t “remove results that link to official government departments and agencies”.

Intent to manipulate

A/B testing is a widespread practice. It can range from being fairly benign — such as to determine the best location for an advertisement banner — to much more invasive, such as Facebook’s infamous mood experiment.

In January 2012, Facebook conducted an experiment on 700,000 users without their knowledge or explicit consent. It adjusted users’ feeds to artificially boost either positive or negative news content.

One reported aim, according to Facebook’s own researchers, was to examine whether emotional states could spread from user to user on the platform. Results were reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Following the report’s publication, Facebook’s “experiment” was widely condemned by academics, journalists and the public as ethically dubious. It had a specific objective to emotionally manipulate users and didn’t obtain informed consent.

Similarly, it’s unlikely users caught in the midst of Google’s Australian news experiment would realise it.

And while the direct risk to those being tested may seem lower than with Facebook’s mood experiment, tweaking news results on Google Search introduces its own set of risks. As research my colleagues and I has shown, platforms and news media both play a large role in spreading conspiracy theories.

Google tried to downplay the significance of the experiment, noting that it conducts “tens of thousands of experiments in Google Search” each year.

But this doesn’t excuse the company from scrutiny. If anything, it’s even more concerning.

Imagine if a police officer pulled you over for speeding and you said: “Well, I speed thousands of times each year, so why should I pay a fine just this one time I’ve been caught?”

If this is just one experiment among of tens of thousands, as Google has admitted, in what other ways have we been manipulated in the past? Without basic disclosures, it’s difficult to know.

A history of non-disclosure

This isn’t the first time Google has been caught experimenting on users without adequate disclosure. In 2018, the company released Google Duplex, a speech-enabled digital assistant that could purportedly make restaurant and other personal service bookings on a user’s behalf.

In the Duplex demos, Google played audio of an AI-enabled speech agent making bookings via conversations with real service workers. What was missing from the calls, however, was a disclosure that the agent opening the call was a bot, not a human.

Critics questioned the deceptiveness of the technology, given its mimicry of human speech.

Google’s controversial dismissal in December of world-leading AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru (former co-lead of its ethical AI team) cast further shade over the company’s internal culture.

What needs to change?

Digital media platforms including Google, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon (among others) exert enormous power over our lives. They also have vast political influence.

It’s no coincidence Google’s news ranking experiment took place against the backdrop of the escalating news media bargaining code debate, wherein the federal government wants Google and Facebook to negotiate with Australian news providers to pay for using their content.

Google’s spokesperson confirmed the experiment is “directly connected to the need to gather information for use in arbitration proceedings, should the code become law”.

Read more: Google’s ‘open letter’ is trying to scare Australians. The company simply doesn’t want to pay for news

While users benefit from the services big tech provides, we need to appreciate we’re more than mere consumers of these services. The data we forfeit are essential input for the massive algorithmic machinery that runs at the core of enterprises such as Google.

The result is what digital media scholars call an “algorithmic culture”. We feed these machines our data and in the process tune them towards our tastes. Meanwhile, they feed us back more things to consume, in a giant human-machine algorithmic loop.

Until recently, we have been uncritical participants in these algorithmic loops and experiments, willing to use “free” services in exchange for our data. But we need to rethink our relationship with platforms and must hold them to a higher standard of accountability.

Governments should mandate minimum standards of disclosure for platforms’ user testing. A/B testing by platforms can still be conducted properly with adequate disclosures, oversight and opt-in options.

In the case of Google, to “do the right thing” would be to adopt a higher standard of ethical conduct when it comes to user testing.

– ref. Google is leading a vast unethical human experiment. You may be one of the guinea pigs – https://theconversation.com/google-is-leading-a-vast-unethical-human-experiment-you-may-be-one-of-the-guinea-pigs-154178

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of South Australia

Did you make a New Year’s resolution to run a marathon? Or perhaps you’ve conquered a marathon and want to take on an even longer event?

Your diet is crucial in long-distance running. If you don’t eat the right foods in the right amounts, you might not get enough energy to train and compete properly.

Over time, not having enough energy during training can lead to “relative energy deficiency in sport” (RED-S) syndrome. This condition can cause problems such as poor recovery between training sessions, reduced training capacity, recurring injuries, and a suppressed immune system.

It can also put you at risk of further health complications. The major long-term one is an increased risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures. Depending on the severity, it can also cause heart problems and gastrointestinal issues such as constipation.

To lower your risk of relative energy deficiency, here’s what you should eat if you’re running long distances.

Carbs are your best friend

Carbohydrates provide most of the energy used during any length of exercise.

The International Olympic Committee on Nutrition for Sport recommends endurance athletes, who compete or train up to three hours a day, consume at least 6-10 grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight each day.

For a 70kg person, this equates to 420-700g a day. For ultra-endurance athletes (people who train or compete for more than four or five hours per day) it’s 8-12g per kilogram. For a 70kg athlete, that’s 560-840g a day.

About 50g of carbs can be found in each of the following foods: five Weetbix biscuits, four slices of bread, two large bananas, three medium-sized potatoes, 600ml flavoured milk, a cup of rice, or one-and-a-third cups of pasta. As you can see, you would have to eat quite a lot of carbs throughout the day to reach the recommendation!

The committee also recommends you eat 1-4g of carbs per kilogram of body weight in the four hours before exercise.

So for a 70kg runner, that means 70-280g of carbs before an event. There’s roughly 70g of carbs in each of the following: two slices of fruit toast with a large banana, one-and-a-half cups of cooked pasta, or 600mls of flavoured milk plus an apple.

You also need to keep up your carb intake during endurance events. You’ll need to consume 30-60g per hour, and during ultra-endurance events up to 90g per hour, regardless of your weight. Ideally, the foods would be high in carbohydrates and low in fibre to minimise gastrointestinal discomfort such as bloating or runner’s diarrhoea.

A total of 60g of carbs would be three slices of white bread with jam, or two energy gels (small packets of high-carbohydrate gel). Sports drinks are also useful if you don’t feel like eating. A 600ml bottle would help with rehydration and provide about 40g of carbs.

These recommendations are only guides. Athletes should consider their current diet along with training intensity, whether they’re meeting training goals, how quickly they tire during training or competition, recovery between training sessions, and weight changes.

Also consider fat and protein

More fat is used as the duration of exercise increases, and if the exercise lasts more than four hours, your body will begin to use small amounts of protein. It’s hard to determine the exact levels of fat and protein used, as this depends on the intensity of exercise and level of training.

Nevertheless, as fat contributes to energy, it’s important to include healthy fat sources such as olive oil, nuts, seeds and dairy products in your diet, although there are no set guidelines for how much fat you need to eat.

There’s also some evidence omega-3 fats, found in fish, may support muscle growth and reduce muscle soreness.

Protein is needed for muscle repair. The International Society of Sports Nutrition Guidelines recommend endurance athletes consume 1.4g of protein per kilogram of body weight, every day. This equates to 98g for a 70kg runner. Each of these foods contains about 10g of protein: two small eggs, 30g cheese, 40g lean chicken, 250ml dairy milk, three-quarters of a cup of lentils, 120g tofu, 60g nuts or 300ml soy milk.

Consuming 20g of protein in the 1-2 hours after exercise helps maximise muscle repair and gain. This amount of protein can be found in one small tin of tuna, 600ml of milk, or 80g of chicken.

Read more: Science of champion runners: inside the body of elite endurance athletes

Drink plenty of water (but don’t go overboard)

You can lose a significant amount of water via sweat during endurance training and events. Making sure you’re hydrated is vital for performance and health. One of the easiest ways to know how hydrated you are is by checking your urine colour — it should be clear or hay-coloured. If it’s amber or darker, you need to drink more water.

While dehydration is problematic, you should also be careful not to drink extreme amounts of water, which can cause sodium levels to drop too low. This is rare, but if you gain weight right after an long-distance event, it might mean you’re drinking too much water.

Read more: Too much of a good thing? How drinking too much water can kill

And don’t forget iron

One of the most important nutrients for endurance athletes is iron. Iron loss occurs during heavy sweating, and women are at increased risk of iron deficiency with menstrual losses.

It’s important to include red meat in your diet, or if vegetarian or vegan to consume more beans, lentils and whole grains.

Read more: How to get the nutrients you need without eating as much red meat

Ultimately, no two athletes have the same requirements to achieve the goals they want from training and competing.

While you may be tempted to buy supplements to improve your performance, this will have little impact unless you get the diet right first. It may be worthwhile talking to an accredited sports dietitian to ensure you’re meeting your energy and fluid requirements and are not at risk of relative energy deficiency syndrome.

– ref. Planning on running a marathon? A sports dietitian on what to eat for long-distance running – https://theconversation.com/planning-on-running-a-marathon-a-sports-dietitian-on-what-to-eat-for-long-distance-running-153425

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Burnett, Honorary Associate Professor, ANU College of Law, Australian National University

It’s official: Australia’s natural environment and iconic places are in deep trouble. They can’t withstand current and future threats, including climate change. And the national laws protecting them are flawed and badly outdated.

You could hardly imagine a worse report on the state of Australia’s environment, and the law’s capacity to protect it, than that released yesterday. The review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity (EPBC) Act, by former competition watchdog chair Professor Graeme Samuel, did not mince words. Without urgent changes, most of Australia’s threatened plants, animals and ecosystems will become extinct.

Federal environment minister Sussan Ley released the report yesterday after sitting on it for three months. And she showed little sign of being spurred into action by Samuel’s scathing assessment.

Her response was confusing and contradictory. And the Morrison government seems hellbent on pushing through its preferred reforms without safeguards that Samuel says are crucial.

A bleak assessment

I was a federal environment official for 13 years, and from 2007 to 2012 was responsible for administering and reforming the EPBC Act. I believe Samuel’s report is a very good one.

Samuel has maintained the course laid out in his interim report last July. He found the state of Australia’s natural environment and iconic places is declining and under increasing threat.

Read more: Environment Minister Sussan Ley is in a tearing hurry to embrace nature law reform – and that’s a worry

Moreover, he says, the EPBC Act is outdated and requires fundamental reform. The current approach results in piecemeal decisions rather than holistic environmental management, which he sees as essential for success. He went on:

The resounding message that I heard throughout the review is that Australians do not trust that the EPBC Act is delivering for the environment, for business or for the community.

A proposed way forward

Samuel recommended a suite of reforms, many of which were foreshadowed in his interim report. They include:

• national environmental standards, legally binding on the states and others, to guide development decisions and provide the ability to measure outcomes

• applying the new standards to existing Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs). Such a move could open up the forest debate in a way not seen since the 1990s

• accrediting the regulatory processes and environmental policies of the states and territories, to ensure they can meet the new standards. Accredited regimes would be audited by an Environment Assurance Commissioner

• a “quantum shift” in the availability of environmental information, such as accurate mapping of habitat for threatened species

• an overhaul of environmental offsets, which compensate for environmental destruction by improving nature elsewhere. Offsets have become a routine development cost applied to proponents, rather than last-resort compensation invested in environmental restoration.

Under-resourcing is a major problem with the EPBC Act, and Samuel’s report reiterates this. For example, as I’ve noted previously, “bioregional plans” of land areas – intended to define the environmental values and objectives of a region – have never been funded.

Respecting Indigenous knowledge

One long-overdue reform would require decision-makers to respectfully consider Indigenous views and knowledge. Samuel found the law was failing in this regard.

He recommended national standards for Indigenous engagement and participation in decision-making. This would be developed through an Indigenous-led process and complemented by a comprehensive review of national cultural heritage protections.

Read more: Juukan Gorge: how could they not have known? (And how can we be sure they will in future?)

The recommendations follow an international outcry last year over mining giant Rio Tinto’s destruction of 46,000-year-old caves at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia. In Samuel’s words:

National-level protection of the cultural heritage of Indigenous Australians is a long way out of step with community expectations. As a nation, we must do better.

Confusing signals

The government’s position on Samuel’s reforms is confusing. Ley yesterday welcomed the review and said the government was “committed to working through the full detail of the recommendations with stakeholders”.

But she last year ruled out Samuel’s call for an independent regulator to oversee federal environment laws. And her government is still prepared to devolve federal approvals to the states before Samuel’s new national standards are in place.

In July last year, Ley seized on interim reforms proposed by Samuel that suited her government’s agenda – streamlining the environmental approvals process – and started working towards them.

In September, the government pushed the change through parliament’s lower house, denying independent MP Zali Steggall the chance to move amendments to allow national environment standards.

Ley yesterday reiterated the government’s commitment to the standards – yet indicated the government would soon seek to progress the legislation through the Senate, then develop the new standards later.

Samuel did include devolution to the states in his first of three tranches of reform – the first to start by early 2021. But his first tranche also includes important safeguards. These include the new national environmental standards, the Environment Assurance Commissioner, various statutory committees, Indigenous reforms and more.

The government’s proposed unbundling of the reforms doesn’t pass the pub test. It would tempt the states to take accreditation under the existing, discredited rules and resist later attempts to hold them to higher standards. In this, they’d be supported by developers who don’t like the prospect of a higher approvals bar.

A big year ahead

Samuel noted “governments should avoid the temptation to cherry pick from a highly interconnected suite of recommendations”. But this is exactly what the Morrison government is doing.

I hope the Senate will force the government to work through the full detail of the recommendations with stakeholders, as Ley says she’d like to.

Read more: Environment laws have failed to tackle the extinction emergency. Here’s the proof

But at this stage there’s little sign the government plans to embrace the reforms in full, or indeed that it has any vision for Australia’s environment.

All this plays out against still-raw memories of last summer’s bushfires, and expected pressure from the United States, under President Joe Biden, for developed economies such as Australia to lift their climate game.

With the United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow in November, it seems certain the environment will be high on Australia’s national agenda in 2021.

– ref. A major report excoriated Australia’s environment laws. Sussan Ley’s response is confused and risky – https://theconversation.com/a-major-report-excoriated-australias-environment-laws-sussan-leys-response-is-confused-and-risky-154254

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gianluca Demartini, Associate professor, The University of Queensland

The Australian government’s push to make Google pay news organisations for linking to their content has seen the search giant threaten to pull out of Australia.

Google Australia’s managing director Mel Silva said if the government’s proposal goes ahead, “we would have no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison pushed back saying he won’t respond to “threats”. Even the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia says Google needs “strong and stringent” regulation because of its monopoly on searching the web.

What if Google pulls out?

Google’s proposal to make Google Search unavailable in Australia means we would need to search the web using other systems and tools. If this really happens, we could no longer go to google.com and google.com.au to search the web.

Read more: It’s not ‘fair’ and it won’t work: an argument against the ACCC forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news

It is important to note that Google is not just web search. Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc also runs key web portals such as YouTube, and productivity tools such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Maps (which actually started in Australia). Those services are not going to be removed from the Australian market, even if web search does get pulled out.

Online advertising is another sector in which Google is the market leader and where it makes money. Pulling Google web search out from Australia does not mean businesses would no longer be able to advertise using Google’s services.

But with no Google Search here, those adverts would no longer appear ahead of any other search results and be visited by Australian users.

Businesses would still be able to put their adverts on other Australian websites that use the Google Ads service.

The issue with this scenario is that Google’s key competitive advantage is the ability to access data from people using its search services. Pulling web search out from the Australian market would mean Google missing out on that data from people in Australia.

The alternatives to Google

Google is the dominant search engine in Australia — it has 94% of the web search market in Australia — but there are other search services.

The second most popular search engine in Australia is Bing, developed by Microsoft and often integrated into other Microsoft products such as its Windows operating system and Office tools.

Another less popular search option is Yahoo, which also offers its own news and email service.

Other alternatives include niche search engines that offer unique tools with special features.

For example, DuckDuckGo is a search engine that has recently risen in popularity thanks to a commitment to protecting its users’ privacy.

Contrary to the web search products from Google and Microsoft, DuckDuckGo does not store its users’ search queries or track their interactions with the system.

The quality of DuckDuckGo’s search results has improved over time, and is now comparable to that of the most popular search engines.

It says it now processes a daily average of more than 90 million search queries, up from just over 51 million the same time last year.

Despite not drawing on users’ data to refine its search algorithms, the technology behind DuckDuckGo and other smaller players is based on the same machine-learning methods that others are using.

Search the web, save the planet

Another interesting and recent proposal of an alternative web search engine is Ecosia. This system is unique as it focuses on sustainability and positive climate impact.

Its mission is to reinvest the income generated by search advertisements (the same business model Google Search is using) to plant trees in key areas around the world.

So far, it says it has 15 million users and has contributed to planting more than 100 million trees, about 1.3 every second.

Will Google really abandon Australia?

Tim Berners-Lee, widely regarded as the inventor of the web, has pointed out that the idea of asking web platforms to pay to post links runs counter to his fundamental concept.

Read more: Web’s inventor says news media bargaining code could break the internet. He’s right — but there’s a fix

That said, it is also unfair for a search engine to make money using content that others have created.

It is also true that most of Google’s revenue already comes from asking others to pay for links on the web. This is how Google’s online advertising works: Google Ads makes advertisers pay for every impression users get or click users make to navigate to the advertised web page.

If users end up buying the advertised product, Google gets an even higher payment.

More likely than Google pulling out of the Australian market, the government and the search giant should diplomatically find a compromise in which Google still provides its web search product in Australia and there will be a return to news organisations for Google making use of their content.

– ref. If Google does pull its search engine out of Australia, there are alternatives – https://theconversation.com/if-google-does-pull-its-search-engine-out-of-australia-there-are-alternatives-154060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Lotz, Professor of Media Studies, Queensland University of Technology

The federal government is talking tough about making Google and Facebook pay Australian news businesses for linking to, or featuring, these publishers’ content.

The digital platforms have been talking equally tough. Facebook is threatening to remove Australian news stories and Google says it will shut off search to Australia if the government pushes ahead with its “mandatory bargaining code”.

The code is meant to help alleviate the revenue crisis facing news publishers. Over the past two decades they have made deep cuts to newsrooms. Scores of local print papers have become “digital only” or been shut down completely.

Read more: Digital-only local newspapers will struggle to serve the communities that need them most

If legislated, the code will require the platforms to negotiate payments to news publishers, as well as disclose changes in algorithms affecting traffic to news sites.

But the code is unlikely to do much to fix the crisis faced by journalism in the internet age. It isn’t even a band-aid on the problem.

The traditional commercial news business model is broken beyond repair. If the government wants to save the social benefit of public-interest journalism, it must look elsewhere.

Newspapers didn’t sell news, but readers

To understand why the commercial news model is so broken, we first need to recognise what the primary business of commercial news media has been: attracting an audience that can be sold to advertisers.

Newspapers attracted readers with news and feature journalism that provided public value, but also information of interest such as weather forecasts, sports scores, stock prices, TV and radio guides and comics. Readers even sought out papers for their advertisements – in particular the “classifieds” for jobs, cars and real estate.

Before the internet the newspaper was the only place to access much of this information. This broad bundle of content attracted a wide range of readers, which the economics of newspapers – particularly the cost of producing the journalism – required.

Why the business model is broken

Internet technologies introduced two changes that have dismantled the newspaper business model.

They offered new and better ways to connect buyers and sellers, pulling advertiser spending away from newspapers. More than 70% of revenue for a typical daily newspaper came from advertising. Before 2000 print media attracted nearly 60% of Australian advertiser dollars, according to an analysis for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry. By 2017 it was just 12%.

Australian advertising expenditure by media format and digital platform

Internet technologies also provided better ways to access the non-journalism information that had made the bundled paper valuable to a mass of readers.

Readers also now access news in many other places, through news apps, aggregators and social media feeds such as Twitter, Reddit, Apple News, Flipboard and many others, including Facebook and Google. Research by the University of Canberra’s News and Media Research Centre published in 2019 found just 30% of Australian news consumers accessed online news directly from news publishers’ websites.

The bargaining code doesn’t solve the main problem

If Google and Facebook are “to blame” for news publishers’ malaise, it is not in the way the bargaining code suggests. Separate from their linking to, or featuring, these publishers’ content, the digital platforms are just more effective vehicles for advertisers seeking to buy consumers’ attention. They serve ads based on consumer interests or in relation to a specific search.

The simple fact is news publishers’ core content is not that important to the platforms’ profitability.

Research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism during the 2019 UK general election – tracking 1,711 people aged 18-65 across mobile and desktop devices for six weeks – found news took up just 3% of their time online (about 16 minutes and 22 visits to news sites a week).

So if stories from Australian news outlets disappeared from Facebook or Google search results, it would barely make a scratch on their appeal to advertisers.

Read more: It’s not ‘fair’ and it won’t work: an argument against the ACCC forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news

Save journalism, not commercial publishers

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry has rightly noted the revenue crisis has crippled commercial provision of public-interest journalism “that performs a critical role in the effective functioning of democracy at all levels of government”.

But the core of the problem is that funding such journalism through advertising is no longer viable. Other solutions are needed – locally and nationally – to ensure its survival.

Read more: Web’s inventor says news media bargaining code could break the internet. He’s right — but there’s a fix

Commercial news organisations no longer offer value to advertisers. Instead of searching for ways to make an obsolete business solvent, efforts should focus on alternative ways to fund public-interest journalism.

More funding for independent public broadcasters is one solution, and incentives for philanthropic funding and non-profit journalism organisations are proving successful in other countries.

It’s a global problem. To solve the crisis in Australia will require focusing on the core problem and thinking bigger than a bargaining code.

For transparency, please note The Conversation has also made a submission to the Senate inquiry regarding the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code.

– ref. The old news business model is broken: making Google and Facebook pay won’t save journalism – https://theconversation.com/the-old-news-business-model-is-broken-making-google-and-facebook-pay-wont-save-journalism-150357

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ted Snell, Honorary Professor, Edith Cowan University

Review: Maverick Modigliani, directed by Valeria Parisi.

It is not surprising we are fascinated by the story of Amedeo Modigliani, a boy from Livorno who arrived in Paris in his early 20s determined to make a reputation as an artist. His story could well have emerged from an all-night script session on a Hollywood backlot.

In the heady creative cauldron of sin-city, surrounded by artists from all over Europe (now grouped together as the School of Paris), a devastatingly handsome young man flees his family to find fame. Quickly seduced by its licentiousness, he lives life to the full.

Fuelled by alcohol and drugs, he paints furiously. His affairs are legendary, most famously with the poets Anna Akhmatova and Beatrice Hastings.

In a career of 15 years, he painted over 400 pictures, made a handful of stone carvings, and produced an archive of drawings before succumbing to tubercular meningitis at the age of 35 in 1920. Two days later, his pregnant young lover, fellow painter Jeanne Hébuterne, took her own life.

Although her family refused to allow the couple to be buried together, in 1930 they finally relented and they now lie together under his epitaph “Struck down by Death in the moment of glory” and hers “Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice”.

Life on the screen

To memorialise Modigliani on the centenary of his death, Italian director Valeria Parisi created the documentary Maverick Modigliani, interviewing historians, artists, forgers and curators about his life and his legacy.

Modigliani’s story has been brought to the screen before.

One of the most visually stunning is Modì (1989) directed by Franco Brogi Taviani in 1989, with Richard Berry in the lead role. Taviani explores the artistic milieu of Paris with relish, detailing the creative exchange that lured artists from around the world.

When Martin Scorsese was planning a movie about Modigliani in the early 1980s, he cast Al Pacino, which sadly never made it to the screen.

Mick Davis’ eponymous film, the 2004 turkey starring Andy Garcia as our hero and Elsa Zylberstein as Jeanne, highlighted the dangers of making the wrong casting choice.

Unfortunately, documentaries don’t provide the same emotional engagement as a good biopic like Modì, and Maverick Modigliani has all the genre’s standard tropes.

A group of talking heads pontificating about the artist and his work interspersed by footage and still images of Parisian life then and now does little to convey the vibrancy and energy of his extraordinary life.

Read more: Friday essay: the Melbourne bookshop that ignited Australian modernism

The scripted voice over, delivered in the guise of Jeanne doesn’t work. If Jeanne was more confessional, more probing, even more salacious, it might have drawn us into their world. Instead, her sad story is obscured by her thoughts on events that happened after she was dead and seems strangely disengaged and disingenuous.

The film does little to interrogate Modigliani’s work.

Instead, we are taken on numerous sidetracks to document student pranks about lost sculptures and an interview with a forger who describes how easy he was to copy. While his life is a Greek tragedy, in this film Modigliani remains a rather bland character.

Elegant revision

Modigliani was a stylist who embraced the current interest in the art of other exotic cultures and antiquity to create an elegant revision under the guise of modernism.

Though shocking to the Parisian public of 1917, his nudes are updated versions of his Renaissance precursors, fashionably hip and rendered in bold flat colour. They are the perfect synthesis of what was happening around him. Modì was a sponge, soaking up the influences of African art, Picasso, Matisse, and Constantin Brâncuși. There is no “School of Modigliani.”

For Nu couché, painted in 1917, his influence was clearly Édouard Manet’s Olympia. However, his similarly supine model seems much less in control as she lies back exposing herself. Her eyes are empty sockets, she is neatly trimmed, available; she is a pinup.

In so many ways it is an uncomfortable painting with none of the inference, subtlety or sophistication of its precursor. The pose is unconvincing, the face is a mask, yet the message of this “portrait” is clear.

It is undoubtedly why it caused a bidding war at Christie’s in 2015 and set a record price for the artist of US$170.4 million. But as a painting it is a mediocre effort.

That said, there are a few real portraits in his oeuvre, works that do extend the genre. His remarkable images of fellow artists Moïse Kisling, Chaïm Soutine and Jean Cocteau are graphically strong and insightful. It is a pity he didn’t show his female models the same respect.

Obscuring the true man

In the end credits, Parisi adds a text explaining she didn’t take sides in the debates over Modigliani’s legacy: which paintings were considered fakes, which are thought to be overly cute, and which stand among the great portraits of the century.

“We have accepted and reported the opinions and statements made by the historians, experts and curators we interviewed in a neutral way,” she says.

Perhaps this is the problem. We know very little more about the artist or his work than when we started. Parisi doesn’t stake a claim for Modigliani or try to convince us one way or the other. For anyone who knows a little of the back story and has scanned a few art books, there isn’t much more to be gained from Maverick Modigliani. What a shame.

Maverick Modigliani is in limited release this weekend.

– ref. Maverick Modigliani review: unimaginative documentary avoids the dramatic truths – https://theconversation.com/maverick-modigliani-review-unimaginative-documentary-avoids-the-dramatic-truths-154072

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Wilson, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago

Despite a recent best-in-the-world ranking for its handling of COVID-19, New Zealand remains at risk as the pandemic intensifies globally. With more infectious variants of the virus emerging, there are many persisting concerns.

In particular, the number of infected people entering managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities at the border is increasing. This pressure contributes to the risk of border failures, which are now regular.

There have been at least nine since August 2020, including the most recent issues with the Pullman Hotel in Auckland.

We argue the time has come to “turn down the tap” of infected travellers coming from so-called “red zone” countries where the pandemic is out of control. We have already advocated for a traffic light system to achieve this.

One option is to reduce the risk of infected travellers getting on flights by using brief pre-departure quarantine and COVID-19 testing in carefully designed ways.

For example, an additional low-cost, rapid antigen test prior to boarding, plus clear instructions to passengers about the need for a period of pre-travel self-quarantine to reduce their risk of infection, could be a prerequisite.

Tighter measures available

A more intensive approach could require all red zone travellers to undergo pre-flight quarantine for five days in an approved airport hotel facility, with daily rapid (saliva) testing by New Zealand-certified officials.

The logistics of this could be simplified by having these approved airport hotel facilities located at specific travel hubs — for example, London, Hawaii and Singapore.

Read more: COVID-19: Northland case is a reminder NZ’s ‘dumb good luck’ may run out

Another possibility is simply to further limit the bookings in MIQ facilities available to travellers from red zone countries — say, down to 500 travellers a month — to make the situation more manageable.

Australia has recently reduced the cap on incoming travellers. The New Zealand government could also temporarily suspend approval for any flights originating in red zone countries.

Benefits from limiting red zone arrivals

Of course, political decision-makers need to consider the immediate well-being of travellers coming from red zone countries (150 to 250 people per day on average).

Some are returning for compelling reasons: they have a health condition and genuinely fear dying in the pandemic, they are coming home to care for a sick relative, or they have lost a job overseas and lack financial support.

But these important considerations will apply to a relatively small number of individuals. They do not outweigh the far greater duty to the rest of New Zealand’s citizens to keep the country COVID-free.

The greater good

Turning down the tap is important for maintaining COVID-19 elimination, providing multiple benefits:

1. Protection from illness and death from COVID-19 outbreaks. Although the outbreak in Victoria, Australia, was eventually controlled, there were still more than 800 deaths. There are also concerning reports of debilitating ongoing symptoms being a feature of COVID-19 infection, and “long COVID” may become a huge public health problem.

2. Protection from the psychological stress, economic disruption and other hardship caused by lockdowns. For example, Auckland Council’s chief economist estimated the cost of level 3 lockdown at 250 jobs and $NZ60-75 million in GDP each day.

3. Protection from greater inequalities from outbreaks that hit communities with higher background rates of chronic disease (Māori, Pacific, low-income New Zealanders), as seen in past pandemics. A recent study estimated those existing inequalities could double the risk of death for Māori and Pasifika compared with NZ Europeans. Indeed, Māori leaders are already calling for reduced traveller numbers.

Read more: NZ needs an evolving pandemic strategy if it’s to keep the public’s trust

Health authorities have a specific duty of care to protect workers in MIQ facilities from infection. While personal protective equipment (PPE) is provided, we know failures can still occur despite workers using it.

There is a case to be made that health authorities are currently not adequately meeting their duty of care by permitting large numbers of infected people to pass through these MIQ facilities.

No legal obstacles

Legal experts have considered the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, the Immigration Act 2009 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (OHCHR, to which New Zealand is a signatory) and confirmed the government can legally set conditions on returning NZ citizens — as is already being done.

Read more: If border restrictions increase to combat new COVID-19 strains, what rights do returning New Zealanders have?

There have been no successful legal challenges to New Zealand’s current quarantine requirements, or in Australia with its even tighter systems. Those requirements can logically be extended to include pre-flight quarantine and testing, and further limiting MIQ bookings to make border control safer and more manageable.

The claim that citizens are rendered “stateless” by such measures is a myth.

In summary, the risk of COVID-19 border control failures appears to be increasing. Action is needed to reduce the proportion of infected people boarding flights, or reducing travel from high-risk countries, or both.

There is no legal case against turning down the tap, provided it is clear such measures are time-limited and not absolute.

– ref. COVID-19: the science and law are clear — it’s time for NZ to turn down the travel tap from high-risk countries – https://theconversation.com/covid-19-the-science-and-law-are-clear-its-time-for-nz-to-turn-down-the-travel-tap-from-high-risk-countries-154159

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University

Anthony Albanese’s sudden change of heart, swapping out Labor’s climate spokesman Mark Butler in favour of the more conservative Chris Bowen, can be read in two ways.

First, as a shrewd chess move: one that sharpens the economic arguments in favour of green jobs, boxes in Bowen’s Right faction behind existing climate ambition, and perhaps constrains Bowen as a potential leadership aspirant.

Alternatively, critics could view Albanese’s decision as more self-serving — the manoeuvring of an opposition leader desperate to shore up his defences.

The NSW Right’s outspoken convener Joel Fitzgibbon had made unusually public attacks on the Left-aligned Butler. Albanese will have a job of convincing people he has not blinked under pressure, throwing an ally under a bus.

That perception could, in turn, be dangerous. It may even trigger existential discussions on his leadership. Not merely because of the loyalty questions it invites, but because of the policy implications in an area of chronic political miscalculation.

Judging by his behaviour, Fitzgibbon surrendered his frontbench spot last year to free his arms for the move against Butler, and by proxy, the campaign against Albanese’s leadership.

The Hunter-based MP is trenchantly pro-coal and anti-progressive. He’s made no secret of his antipathy for green-tinged inner-city politics, which he believes has alienated the party’s industrial origins.

Fitzgibbon blames Labor’s obsession with climate change for everything from the 2019 election failure – where it pledged a 45% emissions cut by 2030 – to the party’s dwindling purchase in the outer suburbs and regions.

Albanese’s position, like all opposition leaders, relies on a mixture of support: in his case, a foundation of Left MPs and the crucial backing of key NSW and some Victorian Right figures. Unsurprisingly, these supporters were the main beneficiaries of the reshuffle.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Albanese’s reshuffle sharpens focus on ‘jobs’ but talk about his own job will continue

Deputy leader Richard Marles gets a super-portfolio combining national reconstruction, employment, skills, small business and science. Another Victorian Right figure, Clare O’Neill, gets a frontbench promotion as spokeswoman for senior Australians and aged care services – assisting the relocated Butler in health and ageing.

And Ed Husic, also an influential player in the NSW Right, is elevated to shadow cabinet in industry and innovation.

Taken separately, these moves may be justified. Together, however, they might also hint at Albanese’s vulnerability, given his own Left faction’s minority position.

The bigger concern for progressives in the short-term will be what these personnel changes amount to in policy terms, if anything.

Does Albanese intend to scale back Labor’s climate ambitions? Fitzgibbon has explicitly called on his party to ditch interim targets entirely, and simply adopt the government’s goal of 26% emissions reduction by 2030.

During the 2019 election, then leader Bill Shorten struggled to quantify the negative impact on economic growth arising from Labor’s proposed 45% cut in emissions.

It was a strategic vulnerability on which Prime Minister Scott Morrison capitalised. He argued relentlessly that Labor’s formula would cost Australian jobs and send household and business electricity prices soaring.

Read more: Labor’s climate policy is too little, too late. We must run faster to win the race

Albanese’s decision to defer interim targets until closer to the next election had already invited doubts about whether Labor is truly committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Butler’s removal is likely to exacerbate those doubts.

The hold-fire approach leaves Labor’s left flank exposed to the Greens’ claims it is equivocating on climate action, just as the rest of the world finds new resolve.

As Albanese put the final touches on his reshuffle, the Climate Targets Panel of scientists and economists released a chastening report. It showed Australia would need to slash emissions by 50% by 2030, and achieve zero emissions by 2045 (rather than 2050) to be in line with the Paris commitment of keeping global warming inside 2℃.

Freshly installed US president Joe Biden has used a series of executive orders to accelerate US restructuring. He hopes to spur global momentum for climate action, calling on developed economies to rapidly increase their commitments.

Albanese, however, denies any diminution. He maintains that Bowen, a former treasurer, is better placed to reframe climate policy in more starkly economic terms, stressing the opportunities for new green jobs against the risks cited by the Coalition.

This may well be sound. Bowen’s established economic standing could allow a “green jobs of the future” rebranding of Labor’s emissions approach.

That would be a breakthrough, given the widening divide between Labor’s professional and blue-collar constituencies, and claims by Fitzgibbon and others on the party’s Right that it has abandoned regional workers through its green emphasis.

There’s little doubt that, as an experienced minister, Bowen has the skills and the policy depth for the job.

But there’s a judgement question. His role in the 2019 election loss – chief advocate of an unwieldy suite of adventurous tax proposals – was arguably more central to Labor’s shock defeat than any perceived overreach on climate.

Not finished yet, Fitzgibbon has described Butler’s removal as a good start but called for further policy change.

Fitzgibbon’s Right-aligned parliamentary colleagues seemed willing to accept his public undermining of Butler. It will be interesting to see whether they allow the same treatment of Bowen.

Read more: Biden’s Senate majority doesn’t just super-charge US climate action, it blazes a trail for Australia

– ref. Albanese throws a bone to Labor’s Right, but Joel Fitzgibbon remains off the leash – https://theconversation.com/albanese-throws-a-bone-to-labors-right-but-joel-fitzgibbon-remains-off-the-leash-154179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Doran, Associate professor/Deputy head of school, UNSW

How does a small retail company that sells video games, worth less than US$400 million in the middle of 2020, become a US$10 billion company in less than six months? How does its share price climb from about US$20 on Jan 12, 2021, to US$347 on January 27 – then fall back to US$193 the very next day?

The stunning price surge in GameStop shares, driven largely by hyped-up Reddit users with the aid of Elon Musk, has drawn the attention of the US government, led to calls for regulation from the head of the NASDAQ exchange, and even driven up the shares of an Australian mining company with a coincidentally similar sharemarket code.

How is this happening? The simple answer is it’s a power play, magnified by social media, between small retail investors who want some share prices to rise and larger hedge funds who have made big bets that those same prices will fall.

Revenge of the little fish

Melvin Capital is a hedge fund (worth US$12.5 billion until recently) with a “short position” on GameStop. A short position means Melvin was betting GameStop’s share price would fall (a reasonable bet, as the outlook for bricks-and-mortar video game stores is a bit like what happened to Blockbuster and other video rental outlets). This in itself is not at all unusual.

What made the past two weeks so unique was the heavy involvement of small individual investors in driving the action. Through platforms like Reddit (specifically the Wall Street Bets forum, which describes itself as “like 4Chan found a Bloomberg terminal”), these retail investors have worked to together to drive prices so high that hedge funds have had to abandon their short positions.

As a result, the short sellers have lost a lot of money and the retail investors (and anybody else with GameStop shares) have made huge profits. Normally on the stock market, the shark swallows the little fish. Now the little fish are eating the shark.

Read more: Explainer: what is short selling?

These individual investors started buying shares (and options to buy shares in the future) in GameStop, and other companies that had significant short positions. In fact, the 50 most shorted companies on the Russell 3000 index have gone up 33% this year.

This increase has become a surge in recent days. GameStop surged in value by 92% on January 26 (US time), leapt another 134% on January 27, and has traded more than 178 million shares. The average volume typically traded for GameStop is roughly 10 million shares per day. This is not normal.

How long can redditors remain irrational?

How is it possible that small retail investors can drive the value of a company up like this?

Two important factors have led to the situation. The first is structural. Investors seized on the fact that Melvin, and another fund called Citron Capital, had significant short positions in GameStop.

When a stock price surges, short sellers must either put in more money to sustain their position or liquidate it. Melvin tried to sustain its short position, because the hedge fund’s managers believe the stock is overvalued, and has suffered massive losses as a result (last week, Melvin announced it was already down 30% on the year). This is a case of the well-known idea that “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”.

Melvin may ultimately be right, and GameStop’s price will eventually fall, but retail investors who knew about Melvin’s bet forced it into an untenable position. With the price continually pushed up, Melvin was left with a stark choice: continue to go short, or else realise its losses.

How buying creates more buying

This leads to the second factor, which is mechanical. The retail investors driving the price surge are much smaller than the hedge funds they are battling. By buying the stock and call options (which are effectively rights to buy the stock in future at a certain price), retail investors are causing market makers to also buy shares in GameStop.

Read more: Gambling on the stock market: are retail investors even playing to win?

Market makers are companies that facilitate share trades by owning stocks and making them available for sale. Market makers don’t care about whether stock prices rise or fall; they just want a cut when people buy or sell.

So when an investor buys a call option from a market maker, the market maker will immediately hedge the position by buying the stock. This way, they are covered whether the price rises or falls.

If there is a big enough surge in speculators buying call options, as we have seen with GameStop, it will be accompanied by a lot of stock buying.

This is a cascading effect, which leads to price runs. In this case, it’s running the price up, but we are just as likely to see the same effect running the price down as well. (This is what happened on a larger scale on October 19, 1987, triggering the Black Monday stock market crash.)

After the surge

These two factors – short sellers getting squeezed and market makers hedging their bets – have led to this situation. You need both for what we are witnessing: an investor with an exposed position (Melvin) and a flurry of investors targeting that position (Redditors and others).

Soon this will be all over. Late on January 27 (US time), Melvin Capital announced it had abandoned its short position. It’s unclear how much money Melvin lost, but it has taken on almost US$3 billion in investment from the Citadel and Point72 funds to cover its losses.

The next morning, GameStop’s price actually continued to rise, reaching almost US$500 for a brief moment. However, at that point several popular retail stockbrokers – including Robinhood, Interactive Brokers and E*Trade – intervened to limit trading in several highly active stocks including GameStop. The price quickly plummeted before rallying and ending the day at $US193.60.

What’s next? With the short sellers removed from the game, the reality of the company’s business prospects may reassert themselves.

The past two weeks have been exciting times for market watchers. But we cannot ignore the apparent ease with which these stocks have been manipulated, and the possibility of more market manipulation in the future.

Read more: The S&P 500 nears its all-time high. Here’s why stock markets are defying economic reality

– ref. GameStop: how Redditors played hedge funds for billions (and what might come next) – https://theconversation.com/gamestop-how-redditors-played-hedge-funds-for-billions-and-what-might-come-next-154076

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

It seems it doesn’t take much of an economic recovery before people start pressuring policymakers to pull back the very policies that have contributed to the recovery.

The Reserve Bank of Australia wisely (if rather too late) cut short-term interest rates to 0.1% – effectively zero – in November. It also lowered longer-term rates through a bond-buying program (i.e. quantitative easing). Given the economic outlook, said the bank’s governor, Philip Lowe, it did not expect to increase the cash rate for at least three years.

Now it is under pressure to raise rates again. ANZ Bank’s head of Australian economics, David Plank, put it this way:

Because things have rebounded so fast, the challenge for the RBA this year will be managing the evolution of monetary policy away from extraordinarily stimulatory settings to somewhat less stimulatory.

That’s an overly rosy view. The Australian economy is still very fragile, and frankly not in great shape.

The unemployment rate is still at 6.6%. Underemployment is a further 8.5%. Worse still, those figures predate the COVID-19 outbreak on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. We don’t yet know what effect that will have.

With the JobKeeper wage subsidy fading away, the economy needs the Reserve Bank’s support more than ever.

To be fair, we thankfully haven’t seen calls for an increase in the cash rate thus far. The main point of contention seems to be around the RBA’s bond-buying program or “yield-curve control” whereby the central bank buys three-year government bonds in sufficient quantities to keep the yield at 0.1%. This has a flow-on effect to the private lending market, including corporate debt and also fixed-rate mortgages.

While it might be true this fairly extraordinary component of monetary policy cannot go on forever, it would be very premature to start winding it back while we haven’t yet deployed a coronavirus vaccine, we’ve just recovered from a dangerous outbreak in NSW (arguably the best-managed state) and unemployment is 2.5-3% above where it should be in the long run.

Read more: Vital Signs: we’ll never cut unemployment to 0%, but less than 4% should be our goal

We’re not out of the woods yet

Moreover, 2021 still involves considerable uncertainty with respect to the coronavirus.

The new strain that emerged in Britain late last year appears to be both more contagious and between 30% and 90% more deadly. Perhaps Australia will avoid it. But all it would take is another hotel quarantine bungle for this to change.

On top of this, there are issues about the national vaccine strategy. We look set to rely heavily on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. There are some plausible reasons for the choice. But given AstraZeneca’s efficacy rate of about 70% (compared with 95% for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines), achieving herd immunity might require almost everyone getting vaccinated. Absent either compulsion or strong incentives, this seems challenging. It will also take time.

Read more: AstraZeneca’s results signal more good vaccine news — but efficacy is only the beginning of the story

All of this suggests business and consumer confidence are unlikely to rebound strongly until this uncertainty is resolved. That could easily take all of 2021. We really don’t want mortgage rates going up in the meantime, which is what would happen if the RBA pulled back on its yield-curve control.

Recoveries are fragile

Not only should the Reserve Bank not be pulling back its economic medicine, if anything, continued fiscal support from the federal government is needed. This month it cut the JobKeeper subsidy to pandemic-hit businesses for employing workers at least 20 hours a week from A$600 to $500. For employing workers less than that the payment was cut from $375 to $325 a week.

It is hard to dispute that JobKeeper has to taper off eventually. The key question is about timing. Deciding to start tapering it off before the roll-out of a vaccine was not ideal. The federal government will need to look for other ways to continue to support business throughout 2021.

Almost all recoveries from economic crises are fragile. That’s certainly true of traditional “demand deficiency” crises such as the 2008 financial crisis. It is crucial for people to believe not just that the economy is going to recover but also to believe that other people believe it will recover – what economists call “higher order beliefs”. Turn off stimulatory measures too quickly and those beliefs unravel.

Read more: Despite appearances, this government isn’t really Keynesian, as its budget update shows

The “supply deficiency” crisis that has characterised the economic impact of COVID-19 may be even more fragile. We simply don’t know which businesses will be viable and which won’t once JobKeeper completely goes away. If there is a slew of bankruptcies or businesses cutting their workforce, the economic crisis could easily get worse.

In times of great uncertainty it’s a mistake to remove the policy medicine that has been helping manage the recovery. The Reserve Bank should stick to its guns.

– ref. Vital Signs: Any talk about raising interest rates is a huge mistake – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-any-talk-about-raising-interest-rates-is-a-huge-mistake-154073

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Manwaring, Senior Lecturer, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders University

Two slippery and elusive phantoms seem to be escaping UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative government. The first is the fiendishly viral and deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of covid-related deaths in the UK has passed 100,000, making it the first nation in Europe to pass this milestone. The UK now has the fifth-highest death toll in the world. The Johnson government has struggled to manage the crisis, and the human cost is higher than the total civilian casualties the UK experienced during the second world war.

As elusive for Johnson, who for so long has played arch-buffoon and joker, is political capital. The concept of “political capital” feels intuitive – popular politicians seem to have a lot of it, and unpopular ones seem to have none of it. Yet, political science has long wrestled with trying to define and understand it.

The notable sociologist Pierre Bourdieu was one of the first to grapple with the idea. The academic Kimberly Casey argues that political capital is analogous to a cake – it requires a number of ingredients and, crucially, not all of them were initially made by the baker. Richard French suggests political capital is made of up of:

[…] mostly intangible assets which politicians use to induce compliance from other power holders [such as business leaders].

After his emphatic 2019 election win, Johnson seemed to have stacks of it. He won a landslide majority of 80 seats and notably broke into Labour’s “red wall” (although the starkly majoritarian electoral system skewed Johnson’s victory margin).

Johnson has made a number of serious political misjudgements in responding to the pandemic. First, his government has repeatedly been slow off the mark to deal with the crisis. At the outset of the first wave, it played down the risks. In March 2020 he was arguing the UK would “turn the tide” in 12 weeks.

Johnson’s government was slow to handle the second wave, attempting a relaxation of restrictions over the Christmas period. The government’s chief medical officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, asserted an earlier lockdown could have made a difference. More striking was this claim relating to the first wave by one of the scientists advising the government, Professor Neil Ferguson:

Had we introduced lockdown a week earlier we’d have reduced the final death toll by at least half.

Johnson also made of habit of either marginalising or just ignoring scientific advice. In tandem with handling the pandemic, Johnson was under immense pressure to deliver a Brexit deal while also dealing with the “economic emergency” of the crisis.

More damningly, there appears to be no overarching and clear strategy to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. Johnson’s government has had to make numerous and predictable policy U-turns on a range of issues.

Poor communication has also been a hallmark of the period. The government’s “stay alert” campaign last May was met with public bemusement. The belated introduction of a tier system in October also seemed to cause confusion and was followed by further England-wide lockdowns.

Johnson’s approach has been bedevilled by trying to meet the health challenges while simultaneously trying to rebuild the economy and manage the spiralling costs of the pandemic. The government’s “eat out to help out” scheme proved disastrous, with evidence it appears to have contributed to the devastating second wave.

Worse still were the complacency and apparent hypocrisy that are part of Johnson’s political calculus – not least his handling of the damaging trip made by his then-top aide Dominic Cummings to “test his vision”. Johnson’s own father Stanley has seemingly flouted lockdown rules, all while his government hectors the public. The double standards in Johnson’s approach give an impression of “one rule for us” and serve as a reminder of the levels of inequality in the UK.

Read more: As a second wave of COVID looms in the UK, Australia is watching closely

There are systemic factors, beyond Johnson’s leadership, that help explain the flailing response to the pandemic in the UK. In a considered essay, Ferdinand Mount brutally reminds us of the systemic dismantling of the NHS and neo-liberal reforms under both Conservative and Labour governments, and the austerity measures that have left the system struggling. Mount’s judgment is:

The malign combination of an over-centralised system and a hopelessly narcissistic prime minister has been fatal.

Will Johnson be able to remake his political capital? If he manages to ride out the current crisis, he has a number of available strategies and systemic advantages.

First, he stuffed his cabinet full of loyalists, many owing their political careers to his backing – even when they break ministerial codes. Johnson is now trying to get on the front foot, expressing “deep sorrow” for the mounting death toll, and a change in advisers is resetting his political strategy. He is adept at downplaying criticisms with the “benefit of hindsight” argument.

Crucially, the UK is not scheduled to head to the polls until 2024. If the vaccine strategy works, Johnson knows future elections are not often decided by a government’s record in the early part of a term.

Read more: As COVID rampages through Europe, it will test not just health systems but social cohesion

– ref. As Britain passes 100,000 COVID deaths, Boris Johnson is in a crisis of his own making – https://theconversation.com/as-britain-passes-100-000-covid-deaths-boris-johnson-is-in-a-crisis-of-his-own-making-154061

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute

The Productivity Commission yesterday released the health section of its annual Report on Government Services, bringing together a range of data on hospitals, primary care, ambulance services and mental health care in Australia.

Comprising more than 200 spreadsheets, it’s difficult to know where to start any analysis.

With a variety of reports published all the time about Australia’s health system, before delving into the findings it’s worth starting with what this one is all about, and why it’s important.

Read more: Budget 2020: big health problems lead to big health spending

Filling a gap

Australia’s health system is an accountability black hole, despite exabytes of data being collected from hospitals, medical services and the public.

Commonwealth and state governments collectively spend about A$115 billion annually on health services, but we don’t always know exactly what results we get for the money.

Very often the data collected are simply about how many “things” have been produced — how many hospital bed days or patients treated, how many GP attendances — rather than what result was achieved for the patient, how efficiently and how equitably.

And the data can be fragmented and overlapping. It is rarely transformed into useful information the public can understand and use to hold politicians, doctors, and hospitals to account.

The Productivity Commission Report on Government Services aims to help fill the accountability hole, with information going beyond simply counting activity to include information about quality as well. The idea is that public reporting will prompt governments to improve their health systems.

How do we measure health system accountability?

We can think of health sector accountability on four different levels, across three main dimensions of accountability: financial, performance and political.

The report focuses on system-level and population-level questions: is the system effective, efficient, and providing care for all equally? And as a consequence, is Australia’s health system achieving good health outcomes for the population?

The report helps answer some of these high-level questions, but there are gaps. It doesn’t provide constructive feedback about the effectiveness of different health-care programs.

The data collected also limits the information in the report, meaning some crucial accountability questions cannot be answered.

For example, the Commonwealth government spent about A$580 million on Medicare-funded clinical psychology and psychology services in 2018-19. But we don’t know whether, on average, people who saw a psychologist had poorer, unchanged or better mental health after the treatment sessions, because before and after measures are not collected.

Meanwhile, the report reveals about half the people who needed a hip replacement in a public hospital waited more than 15 weeks for the procedure. But the waiting time is calculated from when they were added to the waiting list, not when a GP first referred them to the hospital. This “hidden” waiting list — between referral and listing — may span several months. So we don’t know what the average total wait is, even though that’s what matters to the patient.

But this report has lots of useful information

The report sheds light, among other things, on potentially preventable deaths. For example, in 2019, more than 28,000 Australians under 75 died from conditions that are potentially avoidable, including “deaths of despair” such as suicide or drug or alcohol abuse; conditions such as breast or skin cancer; falls, fires and burns; heart failure; or asthma.

These deaths occurred at the rate of about 106 people per 100,000 of the population. Aside from an anomalously better year in 2018, that rate has been trending down over the past decade.

Read more: 7 lessons for Australia’s health system from the coronavirus upheaval

Notably, there are significant differences in the rates of potentially avoidable deaths between the states, from 128 per 100,000 in Tasmania to 100 in South Australia (these rates take into account the different age distributions of the population). This should lead Tasmanians to ask their state government: why the big difference?

First Nations people have a much higher rate of potentially avoidable deaths: 313 per 100,000, compared with 102 for non-Indigenous Australians. Underscoring the poor progress in closing the gap, there has been only a minuscule improvement in the First Nations death rate over the past few years.

The report also highlights quite detailed areas of failure. In 2018-19 almost 6,000 people with diabetes had to have a limb amputated — about 20 people per 100,000 population. The figures varied from 40 per 100,000 in the ACT to 17 in NSW. Again, the question for the ACT government is: what preventive services are missing in the ACT?

The federal government has questions to answer too. For instance, one table in the mental health chapter documents National Disability Insurance Scheme spending in 2019-20 on people with a psychosocial disability as their primary disability. Why was only A$286 million spent in Victoria, compared with almost A$500 million in NSW?

Now what?

This report is an important part of the fabric for our health system. It doesn’t answer every question, but it does help to ensure accountability of Commonwealth and state governments.

That said, right now there’s no requirement for governments to respond to the report’s findings, such as through Parliamentary Public Accounts Committees or, in the case of the Commonwealth, through Senate Committees.

Without this, the investment in bringing all this information together might be wasted, and the accountability black hole as big as ever.

Read more: The Productivity Commission says mental ill-health costs Australia billions — it’s time for a proper investment in making things better

– ref. Productivity Commission health report provides useful information, but leaves some big questions unanswered – https://theconversation.com/productivity-commission-health-report-provides-useful-information-but-leaves-some-big-questions-unanswered-154170

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jyoteeshkumar Reddy Papari, PhD Candidate, UNSW

Long heatwaves during entrenched drought often trigger fears of bushfire. It’s easy to imagine rolling days of hot, dry weather desiccating leaves, bark and twigs, transforming them into a potent fuel.

Victoria’s heatwave in 2009, which reached a record temperature of 46.4℃, came during severe, enduring drought and culminated in the Black Saturday bushfire tragedy.

Likewise, the unprecedented Black Summer bushfires marked the end of 2019, Australia’s warmest and driest year on record. It unfolded in episodes of extreme heat combined with dry, windy conditions.

While we know heatwaves and drought make fires worse, the details are poorly understood. This is what our new research investigated.

We found drought and heatwaves intensify the drying of dead bushfire fuel, and can lead to “megafires” like those we saw last summer. However, we were surprised to find the effect varies in nature over different regions. Let’s look at why.

Fuelling a megafire

Megafires are mainly defined by their enormous size and the amount of resources required to bring them under control. They can burn for months, and consist of multiple “extreme” bushfires.

Extreme bushfires burn intensely in smaller areas, lasting up to a few hours. They’re also widely known to create their own weather, and in the very worst cases can develop into fire thunderstorms.

Most of the damage wrought by the Black Summer fires was due to recurring extreme bushfire events. These were extraordinarily powerful, with high rates of fire spread, high fire intensity and profuse “spotting” (when embers in the wind start new bushfires).

One of the most critical factors driving extreme bushfires is the moisture content of bushfire fuel — grass, leaves, sticks, shrubs, logs and trees.

Drier fuels not only burn more readily and with greater intensity, but are more susceptible to mass spotting, which can rapidly drive a fire across the landscape.

Our study quantified the combined influence of drought and heatwaves on the moisture content of bushfire fuels. We specifically looked at “dead fine fuels”, which consist of dead vegetation less than 25 millimetres in diameter.

Dead fine fuels are specifically considered in fire management due to their capacity to ignite fires and drive the initial spread. They also play an important role in spotting. In fact, when the moisture content of dead fine fuels is critically low, spotting can become the dominant way bushfires propagate.

Heatwaves and fuel moisture

We looked at peak heat and fire seasons in southeast Australia from 1971 to 2020, and investigated the statistical correlation between various heatwave characteristics — frequency, duration, average intensity, and amplitude — and the average dead fine fuel moisture content for this period.

We found the heatwave characteristics of duration and intensity (high average heatwave temperature) had a strong effect on dead fine fuel dryness. But surprisingly the effects were not the same across different regions.

In and around the Australian Capital Territory, lower fuel moisture was driven by long-lasting heatwaves.

Meanwhile, over northeastern New South Wales, southeast Queensland and central Victoria, fuel dryness was driven by heatwave intensity. A clear example of this is when Melbourne endured three consecutive days of temperatures over 43℃ prior to the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, leading to critically dry fuels.

We found drought exacerbates the effect of heatwaves on fuel dryness. However, this also depends on the region.

In and around the ACT, a longer heatwave with drought produced critically low fuel moisture. But in central Victoria, extreme temperatures with drought led to the driest fuel.

Read more: Explainer: El Niño and La Niña

While our research didn’t look at why these variations occurred, we can speculate that it may be due to the ways “climate drivers” influence the weather in different parts of Australia. These climate drivers are phenomena created by circulation patterns in the atmosphere and ocean, and include La Niña and El Niño (or “ENSO”), and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM).

La Niña or El Niño years are mostly felt in Queensland, northern NSW and the NT, and bring wetter or drier weather. And SAM influences the number of heatwaves in central Victoria.

Improving how we fight fires

Understanding what regions are vulnerable to particular conditions is important, because it can improve how fire danger is assessed.

It will also help better identify which parts of the landscape are most likely to experience catastrophic fires, and provide more detailed information for planning prescribed burning activities across the country.

Continuing research in this area is imperative as we face the challenge of managing the greater risk of bushfires under climate change.

Read more: Asking people to prepare for fire is pointless if they can’t afford to do it. It’s time we subsidised fire prevention

– ref. How heatwaves and drought combine to produce the perfect firestorm – https://theconversation.com/how-heatwaves-and-drought-combine-to-produce-the-perfect-firestorm-153890

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Graham, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UNSW

At a time when the world has been in chaos, it’s easy to forget young people might have completely different, yet significant and real, worries. We asked children about their sense of safety and what they worry about in their community.

In July to August 2020 we used anonymous surveys with 176 young people aged between five and 15 from several schools in Darwin, Northern Territory. These data were collected at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, so it is likely concerns were heightened generally.

Here is what kids want you to know

In the NT, addressing community perceptions of safety and concerns about crime levels has long been a priority. We asked students what they were worried about in their day-to-day lives with some specific questions on their sense of safety in the community.

This was an open question in which students could freely respond with three worries of importance to them.

We put children into two groups: 30 children aged ten and under, and 146 children aged 11 and over. Around 30% who responded were male across both age groups. Overall, the major themes that emerged about their worries were:

• personal safety (44%)

• crime (16%)

• bullying and school behaviours (10%)

• mental and physical health (8%)

• school performance (8%).

More than half of students under ten (66%) and over 11 (53%) worried about safety in their local community.

Some of what children said about personal safety was:

I worry about drinking and fighting outside on the street.

I am scared walking home by myself.

Another common worry was a fear of being exposed to crime and racial violence:

I worry about getting kidnapped while walking home from school.

I am scared of people breaking into our home and attacking us.

Health was also a worry and reflects the timing of the survey with references to parent mental health, COVID-19 and death of family members.

Read more: Young people’s mental health deteriorated the most during the pandemic, study finds

This community of schools had delivered some campaigns to support children and their families about domestic violence and resilience. Some children said:

I am worried that mum might hurt herself.

I worry about this pandemic throughout the world.

In the consent process for our surveys, we offered access to supports for children who might have disclosed concerning worries.

School performance and behaviour at school were a concern for 10% of young people aged over 11.

Middle-school students told us:

I worry about passing the year.

I’m worried about what people think of me, my grades and schooling.

How students help themselves

We also wanted to understand how emotionally aware the young people in our survey were. So we asked them: “When you get upset at school, can you make yourself feel OK or good again?”

We also asked where they learnt these strategies and where they sought help.

Only 14% in the over-11 age group reported not being able to feel good again once becoming upset at school. And only 3% of children under ten reported not being able to make themselves feel good again.

Of those who said they were able to calm down in the over-11 group, 58% said they “just know how to do it” and 19% reported “learning it from their family”.

Read more: ‘It’s real to them, so adults should listen’: what children want you to know to help them feel safe

In the under-ten group, 45% “learnt it from a teacher” and 23% “learnt it from their family”.

This suggests young children have greater need for explicit instruction when learning how to self-regulate.

Among children in the under-ten group who said they can’t calm themselves, 42% selected they “get help from a teacher”.

This reinforces the critical role of teachers in these formative years and the time children are likely to be most receptive to help.

Only 3% of students over 11 identified teachers as a source of support. While 39% said they “mostly want to be alone”, 20% “get help from a friend” and another 20% said they “get angry”.

It is reassuring 87% of young people over 11 reported “good” and “very good” family relationships. And 86% said they have three friends they can turn to when in need.

We should appreciate how real children’s concerns are to them and check in with how they are feeling.

Read more: ‘The Australian government is not listening’: how our country is failing to protect its children

Teachers, parents and other adults need to know how to support young people with their worries, and access information to help them develop self-regulation and problem-solving strategies.

A reliable resource for this information is Be You.

This research was conducted by Charles Darwin University

– ref. Children in Darwin are more worried about their safety than their grades – https://theconversation.com/children-in-darwin-are-more-worried-about-their-safety-than-their-grades-153306

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

It seems it doesn’t take much of an economic recovery before people start pressuring policymakers to pull back the very policies that have contributed to the recovery.

The Reserve Bank of Australia wisely (if rather too late) cut short-term interest rates to 0.1% – effectively zero – in November. It also lowered longer-term rates through a bond-buying program (i.e. quantitative easing). Given the economic outlook, said the bank’s governor, Philip Lowe, it did not expect to increase the cash rate for at least three years.

Now it is under pressure to raise rates again. ANZ Bank’s head of Australian economics, David Plank, put it this way:

Because things have rebounded so fast, the challenge for the RBA this year will be managing the evolution of monetary policy away from extraordinarily stimulatory settings to somewhat less stimulatory.

That’s an overly rosy view. The Australian economy is still very fragile, and frankly not in great shape.

The unemployment rate is still at 6.6%. Underemployment is a further 8.5%. Worse still, those figures predate the COVID-19 outbreak on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. We don’t yet know what effect that will have.

With the JobKeeper wage subsidy fading away, the economy needs the Reserve Bank’s support more than ever.

To be fair, we thankfully haven’t seen calls for an increase in the cash rate thus far. The main point of contention seems to be around the RBA’s bond-buying program or “yield-curve control” whereby the central bank buys three-year government bonds in sufficient quantities to keep the yield at 0.1%. This has a flow-on effect to the private lending market, including corporate debt and also fixed-rate mortgages.

While it might be true this fairly extraordinary component of monetary policy cannot go on forever, it would be very premature to start winding it back while we haven’t yet deployed a coronavirus vaccine, we’ve just recovered from a dangerous outbreak in NSW (arguably the best-managed state) and unemployment is 2.5-3% above where it should be in the long run.

Read more: Vital Signs: we’ll never cut unemployment to 0%, but less than 4% should be our goal

We’re not out of the woods yet

Moreover, 2021 still involves considerable uncertainty with respect to the coronavirus.

The new strain that emerged in Britain late last year appears to be both more contagious and between 30% and 90% more deadly. Perhaps Australia will avoid it. But all it would take is another hotel quarantine bungle for this to change.

On top of this, there are issues about the national vaccine strategy. We look set to rely heavily on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. There are some plausible reasons for the choice. But given AstraZeneca’s efficacy rate of about 70% (compared with 95% for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines), achieving herd immunity might require almost everyone getting vaccinated. Absent either compulsion or strong incentives, this seems challenging. It will also take time.

Read more: AstraZeneca’s results signal more good vaccine news — but efficacy is only the beginning of the story

All of this suggests business and consumer confidence are unlikely to rebound strongly until this uncertainty is resolved. That could easily take all of 2021. We really don’t want mortgage rates going up in the meantime, which is what would happen if the RBA pulled back on its yield-curve control.

Recoveries are fragile

Not only should the Reserve Bank not be pulling back its economic medicine, if anything, continued fiscal support from the federal government is needed. This month it cut the JobKeeper subsidy to pandemic-hit businesses for employing workers at least 20 hours a week from A$600 to $500. For employing workers less than that the payment was cut from $375 to $325 a week.

It is hard to dispute that JobKeeper has to taper off eventually. The key question is about timing. Deciding to start tapering it off before the roll-out of a vaccine was not ideal. The federal government will need to look for other ways to continue to support business throughout 2021.

Almost all recoveries from economic crises are fragile. That’s certainly true of traditional “demand deficiency” crises such as the 2008 financial crisis. It is crucial for people to believe not just that the economy is going to recover but also to believe that other people believe it will recover – what economists call “higher order beliefs”. Turn off stimulatory measures too quickly and those beliefs unravel.

Read more: Despite appearances, this government isn’t really Keynesian, as its budget update shows

The “supply deficiency” crisis that has characterised the economic impact of COVID-19 may be even more fragile. We simply don’t know which businesses will be viable and which won’t once JobKeeper completely goes away. If there is a slew of bankruptcies or businesses cutting their workforce, the economic crisis could easily get worse.

In times of great uncertainty it’s a mistake to remove the policy medicine that has been helping manage the recovery. The Reserve Bank should stick to its guns.

– ref. Any talk about raising interest rates is a huge mistake – https://theconversation.com/any-talk-about-raising-interest-rates-is-a-huge-mistake-154073

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Wright, Professor of History, La Trobe University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.

In May 2020, the international mining giant Rio Tinto made a calculated and informed decision to drill 382 blast holes in an area of its Brockman 4 mining lease that encompassed the ancient rock shelter formations at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

In a matter of minutes, eight million tonnes of ore were ripped from the earth, and with them, 46,000 years of cultural heritage destroyed.

The Puutu Kunti Kurrama Pinikura people, who are the traditional owners of that land, lost their material connection to sacred sites of ceremonial, clan and family life, the basis for their political and social organisation. The Australian people lost a significant chunk of their national estate. For this hefty price we all paid, Rio Tinto lawfully gained access to $135 million dollars of high-grade iron ore.

The Human Rights Law Centre said that the global Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, based in the Netherlands, should strip Rio Tinto of its status as a global human rights leader. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who three years earlier had lovingly cradled a lump of coal in his hands in parliament, said nothing.

In the devastating wake of Juukan, it is timely to ask: can the extractive frontier be just as important as the military frontline in defining the story of our nation?

Read more: Juukan Gorge inquiry puts Rio Tinto on notice, but without drastic reforms, it could happen again

Nothing new under the sun

One day, all Australian primary school students might learn about the Juukan Gorge the way generations have studied the 19th-century Victorian goldrush, with its own explosive crescendo, the Eureka Stockade.

To recap: gold was “discovered” in Ballarat in 1851, when the population of Victoria was about 25,000. By 1861, after a tidal wave of immigration from across the globe, that number had risen to over 600,000. Escaping old-world hierarchies, inequality and poverty, polyglot schemers and dreamers dug their way towards a new life of freedom and independence.

When the British rights and liberties of these cosmopolitan miners were threatened by an authoritarian administration and unjust taxation, the disenfranchised diggers rebelled, leading to a short battle and a long legacy: Eureka became known as “the birthplace of Australian democracy”. Recent research, including my own, has demonstrated that women as well as men participated in this mining boom and its economic and political, if not mythological, inheritance.

Similarly little recognised is the fact that the central Victorian goldrush occurred on the lands of the Wathawurrung people, who had made the fertile hunting grounds of the Ballarat basin their ancestral home for tens of thousands of years.

It is estimated that prior to European contact there were up to 3,240 members of the 25 Wathawurrung language groups. By 1861, 255 Aboriginals remained in the Ballarat region.

As historian Fred Cahir has shown in his landmark book Black Gold, some goldseekers were aware of the extensive quarrying, and subsequent commercial transactions, being carried out by Victoria’s Indigenous inhabitants prior to and after British colonisation. Indeed, resource extraction was practised by Indigenous people throughout the continent.

Batjala-Quandamooka-Kalkadoon historian Kal Ellwood has traced the principal mining trade routes of pre-colonial Australia, proving that Aboriginals used sophisticated underground and pit mining techniques, as well as post-extraction treatment processes, as part of complex commercial relationships.

Indigenous Australia had its own stories to explain how minerals were created and where they were deposited. The bronzewing pigeon Marnbi, for example, seeded gold at Broken Hill, copper at Cloncurry, sandstone at Mt Isa and opals at Coober Pedy. The Europeans were novel. The activity they undertook was not.

The Indigenous people of central Victoria might have been dispossessed, but they were not diffident. They installed toll booths on bridges, requested bounties on vessels crossing rivers, took food and goods from domiciles, and demanded financial restitution for revenue extracted from the land, all as a matter of cultural and legal entitlement stemming from prior ownership: “indefeasible title from time immemorial”, as Wathawurrung elder King Jerry put it to the Geelong Council. (Common law title, as we might call it post-Mabo.)

Such insistence, however, fell on deaf ears. In June 1860, by which time the tent city of Ballarat had been replaced by houses, churches and schools, the Victorian government established a system of six reserves to control and administer the affairs of Aboriginal people.

Read more: Noted works: The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka

The other Peninsula campaign

For most Australians, the phrase “the Peninsula campaign” conjures the distant shores of Gallipoli, where ANZACs fought against an alien enemy, apparently for our freedom.

But another battle waged much closer to home — indeed at home — was also referred to as “the Peninsula campaign”. This contest for territorial control occurred on the Gove Peninsula, on the north-east tip of Arnhem Land. The contest was over access to land that contained some of the richest bauxite reserves in the world. It played out over a decade from the late 1950s. The critical year of the campaign was 1963.

The Minister for Territories in the Menzies government, Paul Hasluck, commanded the forces of expansion and development of the Top End; the Yolngu people of the Yirrkala region were the defenders of land that had been legally reserved for them in 1931, and to which they claimed ownership in perpetuity.

The Yirrkala Bark Petitions (August 1963) and the subsequent Select Committee on Grievances of Yirrkala Aborigines (October 1963) were key battles in the offensive. Depending on your perspective, the creation of the mining town of Nhulunbuy, built in 1972, was either the spoils of victory or the price of defeat in the Peninsula campaign.

The military metaphors are mine, not germane to the mining vernacular. I’ve deliberately deployed them here to highlight how much of our national historical consciousness is built around war stories. We understand the language of conflict in binary, adversarial terms: enemy and ally; victor and vanquished.

In reality, the story of how resource extraction led to a four-cornered contest over the right to define and control the narrative of nation-building in north-east Arnhem Land is more complex — and compelling.

Insulating Arnhem Land

The Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve, some 80,000 square miles of flat ironstone and low-lying stringybark forest, was established in 1931 with the intention of “insulating” the region’s Aboriginal population from the rest of the Northern Territory. Arnhem Land became “exclusively Aboriginal”; only missionaries, NT welfare officers and Yolngu were allowed in.

Fierce and co-ordinated Yolngu resistance, coinciding with drought, repelled pastoralists in the 1880s and early 20th century. It was not the first time that strangers had come to Arnhem Land. The Yolngu people are considered exceptional because they are the first Australian Aboriginals to have had contact with foreign visitors.

For at least 500 years, Yolngu engaged in seasonal trading visits with the Macassans, Indonesian seafarers who came to exploit the trepang beds of the north-east coast in exchange for tobacco, pottery, knives and cloth.

By the time the European visitors arrived overland, Yolngu had experienced centuries of adaptation to new material culture and notions of labour and trade for goods and services. They understood and engaged in economic and political relationships, both inter-tribally and internationally.

The next strangers to arrive were the missionaries who established bases at Roper River in 1908, Goulburn Island in 1916 and Milingimbi Island in 1923. Following violent encounters with Japanese pearlers and Darwin-based police, a Methodist mission was established at Yirrkala in 1935 to provide sanctuary for the more than dozen clans of Yolngu people of this Miwatj region.

Yirrkala, and surrounding Melville Bay, encompassed the traditional lands of the Gumatj and Rirritjingu clans. Yolngu, having long understood the positive use to which outsiders could be put, accepted the newcomers. The Methodists also accepted most cultural beliefs, permitted language and rituals, employed a philosophy of bilateral learning and, in many cases, developed genuine friendships and important alliances.

Read more: Friday essay: how Indigenous songs recount deep histories of trade between Australia and Southeast Asia

Prospecting

The first known geological reconnaissance at Gove occurred in 1952, fewer than two decades after the Yirrkala Mission was established, when Hasluck announced a change of policy, opening the NT’s Aboriginal reserves to mineral prospecting.

The time had come, Hasluck argued, to “extract the latent mineral wealth of the Territory”.

In 1958, the Commonwealth Aluminium Corporation (Comalco) was issued Special Mining Lease No. 1 to prospect 21 square metres of land on Melville Bay, abutting the Yirrkala Mission.

According to Hasluck, times had changed since the 1930s, when the system of Aboriginal land reserves had been established “liberally but rather carelessly”. Now, incentivised by the discovery that a blanket of bauxite lined the Gove Peninsula, Hasluck underscored ‘the necessity for developing our national resources’.

By the wet season of 1962, when the Reverend Edgar Wells took over as superintendent of the Yirrkala Mission, it had become commonplace to see prospectors “walk about the country, boring holes, marking off areas, and finally erecting buildings” without, according to Wells, “any attempt at explanation”. The miners, observed Wells, roamed around “with a renewed assurance … in complete optimism … masters of the future.

On 18 February 1963, the federal government ratified an agreement with Nabalco, a joint Swiss–Australian venture, to mine for bauxite. This meeting took place at the Methodist Overseas Mission’s headquarters in Sydney, attended by mining representatives but no Yolngu.

In May 1963, Rirritjingu elder Mawalan Marika put aside tribal rivalries to join with Mungurrawuy Yunupingu, senior elder of the Gumatj clan, and write to Hasluck. They requested 40 houses, “so we can exchange to make us level between you and we natives”.

The lack of consultation was the primary insult, not the idea that they might be asked to share their land. To the Yolngu mind, they were not only custodians of the land – caretakers – but also owners, with the capacity to cede territory.

When Hasluck unilaterally excised reserved land, he effectively stole land from people who understood both the spiritual and commercial value of their assets.

Notice of the excision of the Arnhem Land Reserve was published in the Government Gazette in May 1963. Over the next two months, there was a flurry of correspondence between Yirrkala, Darwin, Canberra and Sydney. Federal Labor MP Kim Beazley Sr, along with Labor MP Gordon Bryant (later Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Minister for the Capital Territory in the Whitlam Government), made the long trek to Yirrkala in July to ascertain the level of distress.

Standing in the newly opened Methodist Church, Beazley contemplated the extraordinary artworks that flanked the altar: large boards painted by Yolngu elders of each clan and moiety, including Mungurrawuy. Edgar Wells’ wife, Ann, who interviewed each of the artists as they painted, recognised these panels were a “statement of land claims”, delineating language borders, natural features, sacred sites and “the disputes that inevitably arise over boundaries”.

On viewing the panels, Beazley suggested the Yolngu present a petition to the parliament in their own vernacular. Before leaving Yirrkala, he furnished the wording of the preamble required of any petition to the House. Yolngu did the rest.

Read more: Indigenous pain and protest written in the history of signatures

On 14 August, Beazley presented the House of Representatives with what have become known as the Bark Petitions: two versions of the text, one in English and one in Yolngu Matha, pasted onto bark and framed with traditional paintings.

There were eight points, but this is the crux: a protest against “decisions taken without them and against them” that were “never explained to them beforehand, and were kept secret from them”, as well as a plea to “hear the views of the people of Yirrkala before permitting excision of this land”. Nowhere do the petitions suggest that Yolngu are opposed to mining per se. What they requested was a voice.

Though Hasluck rejected the Bark Petitions on the grounds they didn’t represent the true wishes of the community (only a small group of young rabble-rousers), the Select Committee on Grievances of Yirrkala Aborigines was empowered — the first time in Australia’s history that a petition had directly led to a parliamentary enquiry.

It concluded that the Bark Petitions were “an appeal to the House of Representatives for protection”. It made 11 recommendations pertaining to how best to integrate the Yolngu into the inevitable establishment of a large mining town on the Gove Peninsula, while preserving sacred sites.

In 1963, the average Aboriginal life expectancy was 42 years. In 1968, the federal government signed an agreement with Nabalco for a 42-year lease to mine and process bauxite in Gove, conditional upon the construction of an alumina refinery and a township able to accommodate 4,000 mining workers, administrators, service providers and their families.

To Wells, the injustice of “giving away of ancestral territorial privilege of children’s children” was simply ‘beyond comprehension’.

Wells was sacked as superintendent on 11 November 1963. The mining lease for Juukan Gorge was granted in 1964.

Read more: Destruction of Juukan Gorge: we need to know the history of artefacts, but it is more important to keep them in place

‘They tricked us.’

In February 2020, I sat with Galarrwuy Yunupingu at his kitchen table in Gunyangara — the Gumatj homeland on Melville Bay, 15 kilometres from Nhulunbuy, now framed by the rusting carcass of the alumina refinery, mothballed by Rio Tinto in 2013 — and read him the list of recommendations from the Select Committee. How many of these things happened, I asked him? “Bangyu,” he answered: None.

They tricked us. They never gave us anything they promised. I’m afraid I have to come to this conclusion. They asked us but they didn’t listen.

Looking at the foundational moments of Ballarat and Nhulunbuy helps to elucidate patterns and themes that should be central to further exploration of how mining has defined the life of our nation. As Galarrwuy has said elsewhere, land rights are one thing, but ownership means more than a moral prerogative.

“We would like to turn the land into money,” Galarrwuy told a somewhat perplexed progressive audience at the 2013 Garma Festival. “Aborigines have land rights but are still the poorest people on earth.”

Ultimately, the Peninsula campaign was not only about the market value of the mineral resources themselves, but also the moral, legal and civic status conferred on those who would call themselves miners. Those who would bring the future along with their bores and excavators. Those who could drive the nation and the economy forward.

In her University of Melbourne Narrm Oration of 2015, From Hunting to Contracting, Marcia Langton outlined the history of Aboriginal Australians’ economic exclusion from colonial times to the 21st century. Mining, she argued, offered First Nations peoples “a new paradigm devoted to development”.

To Langton, examples of Indigenous wealth creation demonstrate Indigenous engagement with the private sector economy is the “best way to close the gap”. (Indeed, the Gumatj Corporation launched its own 100% Yolngu-owned mining training facility and bauxite operations in 2017.)

Where mining is concerned, however, economic development is not a “new paradigm” that Indigenous Australians have latterly come to accept as part of the logic of late capitalism or “postcolonialism”. Rather, an economic stake in the land is something that has been perennially contemplated and contested in territories that have come to hold commercial importance to white Australia.

What has changed, perhaps, is that mining companies have recognised the “social capital” of collaborative working relationships with Aboriginal “stakeholders”. Whether this new alliance proves to be a reliable means of “livelihood and independence” for Aboriginal communities remains to be seen.

Juukan Gorge represents the pinnacle of the colonial mining project. It fulfils the Four-F rating that is at the heart of Australia’s relationship to land: Find it. Fuck it. Flog it. Forget it. Let’s hope that Juukan stands as the most broken, defective, shattered and superseded point of the hill.

This is an edited extract, republished with permission from GriffithReview71: Remaking the Balance, edited by Ashley Hay.

Clare Wright is currently writing a book about the Bark Petitions, the third instalment of her Democracy Trilogy.

– ref. Friday essay: masters of the future or heirs of the past? Mining, history and Indigenous ownership – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-masters-of-the-future-or-heirs-of-the-past-mining-history-and-indigenous-ownership-153879

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Overhype can be a dead giveaway of under-confidence. When Anthony Albanese on Thursday compared his situation to that of Joe Biden, it sounded rather desperate.

Some journalists, he said, had predicted a certain Trump win. But “a bloke who was a former deputy leader and an experienced politician who had held a wide range of portfolios and who was someone who was underestimated by some” was now US president.

“I will be the leader of this country after the next election,” Albanese declared as he ended the news conference where he announced his reshuffled frontbench.

It smacked of a message to himself.

The obvious rejoinder is that Joe Biden was up against an opponent who did everything to invite defeat. Scott Morrison presents a very different challenge.

Albanese has turned his reshuffle, earlier set to be minimal, into an attempt to protect his leadership.

Read more: Embattled Albanese uses reshuffle for a political reset

But there are two problems.

The less serious one is that changes can bring some negative fallout. For instance, shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers might be less than enthusiastic that deputy leader Richard Marles is moving into the economic area as shadow minister for “national reconstruction, employment, skills and small business”. Tanya Plibersek didn’t like losing training (although she was pleased to regain responsibility for women).

More serious is that Albanese’s problems are not driven by the performances of his frontbenchers, but by his own performance.

For the most part, it’s not the shadow ministers who’ve been coming under fire – leaving aside Joel Fitzgibbon’s attacks on climate spokesman Mark Butler. It’s Albanese’s failure to cut through that critics raise within and outside the Labor Party.

The most significant and controversial of the changes is moving Butler out of climate and energy, replacing him with Chris Bowen.

Albanese previously insisted he wouldn’t shift Butler. He casts the Bowen move in terms of greater emphasis on jobs. Bowen, with his treasury background, will bring a strong economic slant to the post. And he might be a better salesman; Butler has been hardly seen lately.

But some may reckon Labor has become spooked on climate policy just when it’s in tune with the times, as the Biden administration, labelling climate change an “existential crisis”, advances very robust policies.

While the change is a slap for Butler, his new job of health and ageing is high-profile. He’s a former minister for ageing and he’ll have plenty of political exposure after the royal commission reports soon.

The government is very vulnerable on aged care, where most of the COVID deaths occurred. Morrison knows this and elevated it to cabinet in his December reshuffle. Labor also needed extra frontbench heft for the coming debate.

Marles will be of more political use in employment and science than he was in defence. On Thursday he impressed with a strong speech at the news conference. Albanese described Marles as “shadow minister for jobs, jobs and more jobs”.

Ed Husic, the most recent recruit to the frontbench and a good retail politician, should go well in industry and innovation.

But attention will continue to focus on Albanese himself. Once colleagues and media have formed negative judgments, it’s very difficult for a leader to reverse them.

Albanese doesn’t have the problem Bill Shorten had – that so many voters intensely disliked him. Indeed people seem quite warm towards Albanese personally. But that doesn’t mean they’ll vote for him, and Labor’s primary vote remains low.

On the back foot, Albanese tries too hard to be visible. His impractical suggestion this week that the January 26 Australia Day holiday could be an appropriate date for a referendum on Indigenous recognition was a case in point.

The discontent with Albanese will continue. Whether it will blow up is impossible to predict.

Fitzgibbon has achieved the shift of Butler but he will go on stirring. Asked about Butler, he said: “A change of jockey alone will not be enough. We really do need to change the policy trajectory and to recalibrate.” Now he’s questioning the rule, product of the Rudd era, that Labor has in place to protect leaders from a challenge.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Joel Fitzgibbon on Labor climate policy and leadership

Plibersek, from the left, is trailing her coat as an alternative to Albanese. She’s very active, recently edited a book of essays (titled Upturn: a better normal after COVID-19), and hers is usually the name first mentioned in leadership speculation.

She is popular and articulate. But, the sceptics say, when Labor needs to broaden its appeal in the middle ground, why would you substitute one inner-city leftie for another inner-city leftie?

Anyway, Plibersek faces a numbers hurdle. She’d need some support from the right, and there’s no sign of that.

The obvious candidate from the right is Chalmers, but it’s said he doesn’t have an interest at this stage.

Some Labor sources see the positioning by frontbenchers not so much in terms of a pre-election putsch as “branding” for the leadership battle after an election loss.

Albanese is an astute numbers man from way back and well aware his biggest protection lies in the arithmetic.

But equally he knows that’s not absolute protection – he must do better. He’ll step on the policy pedal in coming months, but even this is not easy when things remain so COVID-dominated, directly (with the coming vaccine rollout) or indirectly, as the economy recovers. Out-of-the-box fresh ideas are in short supply.

Labor started 2020 optimistic, because of the toll the bushfires took on Morrison’s support. Then the pandemic sucked the politics out of politics, infecting the opposition with a fever of despair.

On present polling Labor wouldn’t win an election, which could be later this year. But perhaps it should remember it did win 2020’s only real-life federal contest (the Eden-Monaro by-election). It should also remember the volatility of politics.

Labor is not in the situation it was in the run-ups to the 1983 and 2007 elections, when the indications were a leadership change would produce a clear advantage.

Making a change in 2021 might involve a good deal of trauma for very little or no gain. Whether that would be the view of nervous holders of marginal seats is another matter.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Albanese’s reshuffle sharpens focus on ‘jobs’ but talk about his own job will continue – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-albaneses-reshuffle-sharpens-focus-on-jobs-but-talk-about-his-own-job-will-continue-154198

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kaufman, Research Fellow, Vaccine Uptake Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

The federal government’s A$23.9 million COVID-19 vaccination information campaign, launched yesterday, aims to reassure the public about vaccine safety and effectiveness. It will also provide information about the vaccine rollout.

We’ve only just started to see the campaign materials appearing online, but the government also promises other communication formats, such as print, radio and outdoor advertising.

Australia has never undertaken a vaccination program of this scale, and effective communication will be crucial to its success.

So here’s the $24 million question: will this communication campaign work? Vaccine and public health communication research provide some useful insights.

Who are the spokespeople?

Research into how best to communicate risk tells us the most trustworthy spokespeople:

• are competent and objective

• are reliable and transparent

• share the values and experiences of the audience

• demonstrate empathy and address the audience’s concerns.

This video — which features a deputy chief medical officer (and infectious disease physician), a representative of the Therapeutic Goods Administration and chief nursing and midwifery officer — is a great start.

These people are widely seen as experts and trusted health-care providers. They’re not controversial or partisan figures who might be seen to have a political agenda.

But do they resonate with every audience? It might be valuable also to include some diverse and more accessible spokespeople who represent particular communities, such as cultural or religious leaders.

To increase engagement on social media, the campaign could also use respected celebrities or sports stars to share messages or act as vaccination role models. In the 1950s, Elvis Presley was used to promote the polio vaccine.

An effective communication campaign should also train and empower health-care workers such as GPs, nurses and pharmacists to discuss COVID-19 vaccines confidently with the public. This is not visible in the public campaign, but may be part of the government’s strategy.

Read more: 5 ways we can prepare the public to accept a COVID-19 vaccine (saying it will be ‘mandatory’ isn’t one)

Is it easy to understand?

Information for a wide population needs to be designed for people with different levels of health literacy — the ability to understand, access and act on health advice.

The government’s animated explainer videos demonstrate many principles of effective communication. They are relatively simple, use graphics and short bullet-point lists, and repeat their key messages.

Read more: Most government information on COVID-19 is too hard for the average Australian to understand

They currently focus on passively providing information, but the best kind of public health messages are action-oriented. Hopefully, once the vaccines are actually available, the campaign will focus on behaviours such as visiting a vaccination delivery site, speaking to your GP or demonstrating where to find information.

There’s also an important balance to strike between accessibility and oversimplification. Some people with concerns about vaccines want more detailed information about safety, side-effects and efficacy. This information should also be available as part of the communication campaign.

Is it culturally appropriate?

Australia is a diverse country. Not everyone speaks English or watches government press briefings on TV. Throughout the pandemic, communication strategies that were inadequately or incorrectly translated or poorly disseminated have been rightfully criticised.

The new communication campaign plans to specifically target Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people with disabilities, and culturally and linguistically diverse communities.

Better yet, the government indicates committees representing these groups are informing its campaign. Therefore, communication materials may look very different for different groups.

This would show the government has undertaken a meaningful process of community engagement to design communication to reach everyone and resonate with their values.

Read more: We asked multicultural communities how best to communicate COVID-19 advice. Here’s what they told us

Is it responsive?

From what we know so far, the communication campaign shows promise with its spokespeople, health-literate design and focus on engaging with diverse communities.

However, we don’t know whether the campaign can adapt and respond to changing events, concerns and evidence. This is one of the most important features of an effective vaccination communication campaign.

People concerned about COVID-19 vaccines commonly cite safety as one of their top concerns. So it is paramount the government proactively prepares to communicate about any side-effects or possible safety issues that arise following vaccination, and respond to events quickly. The government also needs to share safety data transparently and regularly with the public to build and maintain trust.

Monitoring social media can also help identify developing rumours and misinformation before they spread widely. This strategy, also called “social listening”, can be used to inform the communication messages and approach.

If rumours are caught soon enough, it’s possible to pre-emptively debunk — or “prebunk” — misinformation before it takes hold.

Read more: Laws making social media firms expose major COVID myths could help Australia’s vaccine rollout

Finally, the campaign should be actively seeking public feedback and input. It should be informed by regularly measuring how people feel about vaccination and asking about their concerns.

The government could do this by setting up interactive virtual town hall meetings or Q&A sessions for the public to speak directly with spokespeople. This would demonstrate transparency and a willingness to hear and respond to issues as they arise.

There has been extraordinary coordinated effort and investment around the world to develop effective COVID-19 vaccines. Now, we need evidence-based communication about these vaccines that engages people, offers accessible, culturally appropriate information and earns their trust.

– ref. The government is spending almost A$24m to convince us to accept a COVID vaccine. But will its new campaign actually work? – https://theconversation.com/the-government-is-spending-almost-a-24m-to-convince-us-to-accept-a-covid-vaccine-but-will-its-new-campaign-actually-work-154062

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sallie Yea, Associate professor & Principal Research Fellow, La Trobe University

Each year, thousands of men and boys labour under extremely exploitative conditions on commercial fishing vessels owned by Taiwanese, Chinese and South Korean companies.

The Taiwanese fleet, which operates in all reaches of the globe, is alone estimated to have around 100,000 foreign fishers in its crew, mainly from Indonesia, the Philippines and Cambodia.

These fishing vessels mainly catch tuna, marlin and swordfish, but they have also been found to catch threatened species, including sharks, dolphins, turtles, whales and seabirds. Much of the catch is sold fresh to markets in Asia, but is also processed in countries like Thailand and exported beyond Asia, including to Australia.

The conditions on many of these vessels are shocking. The fishers are often expected to work up to 20 hours a day, seven days a week, leaving little time for adequate rest.

Food is often in poor supply, expired or rotting, and a one-litre ration of drinking water must be shared among three men. Injuries, illness and physical and sexual violence are commonplace. The number of deaths on these ships is increasingly drawing attention from the international community.

As part of our research on human trafficking and slavery in distant waters fisheries, we interviewed 25 Indonesian boys and men working on these ships over the past year, and another 48 Cambodian and Filipino men from 2015–19.

One thing the men emphasised was how they were promised salaries of around AU$300–600 per month, only to later discover the wages were not paid to their families back home. Instead, massive deductions, fines and fraudulent contracts kept them in a state of constant debt.

What constitutes human trafficking

According to the UN Trafficking Protocol, human trafficking involves three elements:

• deceptive or fraudulent recruitment

• facilitated movement to the place of exploitation

• exploitation at the destination.

Our interviews with victims confirm all three elements are very clearly present. So, why then is it so difficult to address this problem?

One reason is the main responses to seafood slavery have centred on trying to improve supply chain transparency rather than focusing on justice itself, such as securing compensation for the fishers, supporting them through the legal process and effectively criminalising traffickers.

Read more: Fact check: How many people are enslaved in the world today?

In Australia, the focus on supply chains has meant tracing the seafood we import to ensure there has been no forced labour or human trafficking.

Ensuring supply chain transparency is an important part of Australia’s 2018 Modern Slavery Act. Non-government organisations, such as Be Slavery Free, are also advocating for a uniform labelling system for all imported seafood.

While this is important, the focus on supply chains does not offer a complete solution to the problem.

Our research into three human trafficking cases

Between 2015–20, we reviewed three legal cases of human trafficking in Indonesia, Cambodia and the Philippines involving Taiwanese-owned vessels. We also interviewed dozens of victims who were witnesses or plaintiffs in the cases. Our initial findings suggest much more can be done to protect trafficked fishers and provide them with access to justice.

One of the problems with the current justice response in many countries is it focuses on criminalising traffickers, while the victims are not always able to pursue civil claims.

Read more: How to keep slave-caught seafood off your plate

In the Philippines case, for instance, the victims were not offered the opportunity to make a civil claim, and their involvement in the case against their traffickers was limited to giving evidence as witnesses.

Even in this capacity, there was not much support for them. They had to travel to the trial at their own expense and were not allowed to leave the Philippines until it ended, more than two years later. For the men, the legal proceedings actually worsened their financial insecurity.

As one of the Filipino victim witnesses lamented,

I should never have agreed to be a witness in this case. I have no job or income since coming back from the boat, but the [prosecutor] doesn’t care about that at all, only that I show up to give the testimony when he calls.

No compensation or restitution for the men

In the Cambodian case we reviewed, four Taiwanese traffickers were convicted of human trafficking and one was subsequently jailed. The other three remain at large.

But it has now been seven years since the conviction and the fishers have still not received the US$2,500 or so they were each awarded by the court. Without the money to start a small business or pay off debts, many had no choice but to try their luck on fishing vessels again.

In the Indonesian case, the victims received restitution of US$1,850 each, but this was a fraction of the US$9,200–11,000 they had sought to cover three years of unpaid salaries. One of the victims told us,

we decided to take it instead of getting nothing at all.

Light punishments for traffickers

Even in terms of punishing traffickers, the criminal cases have not acted as a significant deterrent to others.

In the Philippines case, for example, only two low-level recruiters were convicted. The owners of the labour recruitment agency in Singapore were not investigated and remain in business.

The Taiwanese captain of the vessel was also never prosecuted, even though there were serious allegations of physical abuse and the suspicious death of one Filipino fisher.

In the Indonesian case, the owners of just one of the two manning agencies were convicted. The investigation of the second agency was halted because it claimed to be no longer operational.

What can Australia do differently

In December, the Australian government released its National Plan of Action to Combat Modern Slavery, which outlines key initiatives over the next five years to respond to slavery, both in Australia and the Indo-Pacific region.

It is heartening to see a significant focus on justice in this plan. We suggest a few additional steps the government should take:

• work through regional mechanisms like ASEAN and the Bali Process to ensure investigations of traffickers can proceed cooperatively across jurisdictions and include labour recruitment agencies, boat captains and senior crew, and owners of fishing fleets

• better support fishermen through the legal process, including providing resources for NGOs to assist them

• urge countries involved in the trade to make it mandatory for remedial justice and civil claims to occur alongside criminal proceedings

• coordinate between source countries of fishers, port states and fleet states to ensure fishers are protected and appropriately supported.

Read more: Fishing industry must do more to tackle human rights abuses – here’s where to start

To date, justice that ensures the resilience of victims and reduces their vulnerability to re-trafficking has either not been effective or pursued at all. We need to recognise justice is largely about financial compensation and ensuring the enforcement of fishers’ labour and employment rights.

As one of the Indonesian fishers reflected,

Nothing good has come out of this case. Now I must go again to try my luck working in Thailand. What other option is there?

– ref. Why is it so difficult to stamp out seafood slavery? There is little justice, even in court – https://theconversation.com/why-is-it-so-difficult-to-stamp-out-seafood-slavery-there-is-little-justice-even-in-court-152179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rice, Professor of Management, University of New England

Elon Musk is now the world’s richest person, edging out previous title holder Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. His rocketing fortune is due to the booming share price of Tesla, the maker of electric vehicles and clean energy technologies.

In the past week Tesla’s share price surpassed US$880, ten times its March 2020 low of US$85, giving the company a market capitalisation (or total value) in excess of US$880 billion – more than Toyota, Volkswagen, Daimler, General Motors, BMW, Honda, Hyundai and Ford combined.

That’s an extraordinary amount for a company that only last financial year made its first full-year profit since being founded in 2003; and that profit was relatively modest. It gave Tesla a price-to-earnings ratio – a standard measure of a stock’s value – close to 1,700.

Compare that to the other shares that have boomed since global stock markets rebounded from the COVID-induced lows of March 2020 – technology companies such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Amazon’s PE ratio is about 97, Apple’s about 44, and others in the 30-40 range.

Telsa’s latest quarterly profit is equally modest, missing analysts’ expectations with reported earnings per share of just 80 cents. Its share price has dipped as a result, but still remains a very optimistic valuation.

So can Tesla’s valuation be justified, or is this one more example of a bubble waiting to burst? Well, Tesla is clearly an extraordinary innovator, but there are several reasons to think that, though irrational exuberance may drive its value even higher, sooner or later it’s going to come crashing back down to earth.

Read more: Tulip mania: the classic story of a Dutch financial bubble is mostly wrong

The positives

Tesla has benefited from its founder’s vision. It has established a strong brand as the premiere producer of electric vehicles and renewable energy systems – two industries on the cusp of significant growth as the world moves away from fossil fuels.

It has successfully developed a suite of electric cars where other car companies have failed. It has done this by capturing the imagination of investors and technology enthusiasts alike with technically impressive and aesthetically beautiful products.

It has become a major manufacturer of solar photovoltaic systems.

Connected to both these markets are its developments in batteries to power vehicles, homes and entire communities. In South Australia it built the world’s largest lithium-ion battery, storing renewable energy from nearby wind turbines when generation exceeds demand and balancing out the grid when demand exceeds variable supply.

These industries will accrue a greater share of vehicle and energy markets over time, and Tesla will be a major player in both.

However, Tesla faces serious challenges.

Tesla has led, but others will follow

The major car makers, once wedded to their old internal combustion technologies, are embracing electric in response to what is, for them, an existential threat. Car makers from Korea to Japan to Germany – and of course China – are responding with new products to challenge Tesla’s position.

In strategic management, this response is called “disruption”.

The term is most closely associated with the American academic Clayton Christensen. In his influential 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, he describes the inexorable processes of how “early movers” are confronted with a new batch of entrants intent on securing their share of growing markets.

Tesla’s success is tantalising, something both established and start-up competitors will seek to emulate. Late movers may start with simpler, cheaper and by some measures inferior products. But over time they can learn what consumers want and are willing to pay for. They then challenge industry leaders for a share of the market, starting at the bottom but always moving upward.

Indeed, Tesla itself has benefited from these very processes.

Read more: Pursuing Tesla’s electric cars won’t rev up VW’s share price

Smoothing the road for competitors

As an early mover, Tesla is also laying the foundations for emulators’ success. By establishing the impetus for infrastructure needed for the massive roll-out of electric vehicles, later movers will face fewer entry obstacles than Tesla and other early movers.

These include creating charging stations that, once established, will drive a virtuous cycle of increased demand for electric vehicles and supply of stations.

But the differences between Tesla and its big-tech peers may be a source of serious challenge.

Read more: How superfast charging batteries can help sell the transition to electric vehicles

Other tech companies benefit from what economists call network effects: the more ubiquitous a product, the more valuable it become to users.

Social media platforms are an obvious example, but it also applies to companies such as eBay and Amazon: the more buyers and sellers on these platform, the greater their value to sellers and buyers – and therefore the greater the returns to the service provider.

For Tesla, network benefits are harder to protect. More electric vehicles will create more demand for charging stations, and more charging stations will help vehicles sales. But it will be harder for Tesla to protect its stations from benefiting competitors.

Perhaps for Tesla’s visionary founder that’s just fine. His plans extend far beyond making money – and Earth.

But if you’re an investor, it’s something to be careful about. You might be able to ride the speculative rocket, so long as you time when you hop off. But if you’re looking at Tesla as a long-term investment – as you should – there are no guarantees.

– ref. Can Tesla’s share price be justified? Probably not – https://theconversation.com/can-teslas-share-price-be-justified-probably-not-153793

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therese O’Sullivan, Associate Professor, Edith Cowan University

The COVID vaccine rollout has placed the issue of vaccination firmly in the spotlight. A successful rollout will depend on a variety of factors, one of which is vaccine acceptance. One potential hurdle to vaccine acceptance is needle fear.

In a study that surveyed parents and children in Canada, 24% of parents and 63% of children reported a fear of needles. About one in 12 children and adults alike said they didn’t get all the vaccinations they needed because of their phobia.

Needle phobia generally begins from around age five, and can last through to adulthood. It can be a barrier to health-care access and treatment.

So it’s important to establish positive attitudes towards needle procedures, particularly vaccination, early in life.

An opportunity

Although there’s no one specific reason why people develop needle phobia, people who are anxious and fearful of needles can often relate their concerns back to one poorly-managed needle experience as a child. A bad experience may result from feelings of powerlessness due to being under-informed or being “tricked” into a vaccination.

In Australia, the National Immunisation Program Schedule includes vaccinations during the first 18 months, again at age four, and then in adolescence.

While it’s important to use a respectful approach at all ages, the four-year-old vaccinations present a particularly valuable opportunity for parents to help children feel comfortable with needle procedures.

Read more: Everyone can be an effective advocate for vaccination: here’s how

The guide below offers a strategy to help make vaccination a positive experience for your child. It’s based on what’s called the respectful approach to child-centred health care. This focuses on the parent and health-care provider developing a cooperative relationship with the child, rather than using authority or incentives.

The aim is to help the child feel in control and reduce anxiety around needle procedures.

Five steps

1. Prepare

A few weeks beforehand, briefly introduce the topic of vaccinations and why they’re important.

Expect some resistance. This is normal — there’s no need to argue, just acknowledge your child’s feelings. Let them know adults don’t particularly like getting vaccinations either!

About a week out, mention again that they’ll be having a vaccination, and give some details, such as where they will be going. Another reminder the day before is helpful.

2. Be honest and transparent

It’s important to check if your child has any questions each time you discuss vaccination with them. Answer as honestly as possible. Yes, it will hurt. But not for long — most of the pain will be gone by the time 30 seconds is up, perhaps as long as it takes to run around the house or say the alphabet.

Read more: Children may need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 too. Here’s what we need to consider

3. Give choices

Help children feel like they are actively part of the process by giving choices where possible. For example, can they have a choice of day, or morning or afternoon?

Check with your health-care provider in advance whether children can choose the location of the injection – normally the vaccines are administered on the outside of the thigh, or the upper arm.

In the lead up, the child might like to prod themselves with a toothpick to see the difference between how each site feels. They may also have a preference for the left or right side.

Sometimes it helps to yell out when you feel pain. Kids may find this fun if you give them free reign to call out anything they want (even “rude” words) when the injection goes in. Just let your health-care provider know in advance so they’re not taken by surprise.

4. Avoid bribes and distractions

Offering a bribe can give the child the impression there’s something terrible about the procedure. As the parent, be confident (or pretend to be confident if you have needle fear yourself). Pain-related beliefs and behaviours can be learnt through observing others, and children are very perceptive.

You can always do a fun activity or have a treat afterwards, but make this a surprise at the end rather than a bribe before the vaccination.

Distractions are common, but can leave the child wondering why they were distracted. “What was going on that was so bad I wasn’t allowed to look at it?”, they might wonder. When children feel they have been deceived, this may erode trust.

Some children may like to watch so they know what’s happening — give them the option. Interestingly, in one study, adults who chose to watch the needle being inserted into their arm reported less pain compared with those who chose to look away.

5. Use mindful parenting

Think of vaccinations as an opportunity to be 100% present, one-on-one with your child. Put aside any multitasking for the morning or afternoon of the vaccination. If you can, take the time off work, turn off your phone, and arrange for any other siblings to be looked after.

Observe your child, aim to listen with your full attention, be compassionate and aware of how you and your child are feeling. All of these things can improve the quality of parent–child relationships and are important for helping children through potentially anxious times.

Read more: Fear of needles could be a hurdle to COVID-19 vaccination, but here are ways to overcome it

– ref. Needles are nothing to fear: 5 steps to make vaccinations easier on your kids – https://theconversation.com/needles-are-nothing-to-fear-5-steps-to-make-vaccinations-easier-on-your-kids-153639

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bernard Walker, Associate Professor in Organisations and Leadership, University of Canterbury

Kiwis know what it’s like when life throws curveballs. We’ve had major quakes, floods, fires, an eruption, a terrorist attack and now a pandemic. In those situations, it’s the ability to collectively “get the smarts”, to devise clever, adaptable responses, that really makes a difference.

But the challenge now is to keep doing the smart thing as we continue to face risk from the ongoing pandemic.

Our research echoes international studies in finding this requires leaders who can recognise what a crisis needs, frame the situation and then draw people together to act in new creative ways to deal with the circumstances.

For a nation or group, adaptive resilience occurs when we are thrown out of our normal routines and have to find new ways of responding. It draws on our planned resilience, the resources and plans we’ve prepared in advance.

Adaptive resilience then moves forward, with agile ways of responding, making decisions on the spot, and rapidly learning while a crisis is still happening.

Pandemic reaction

Studies of New Zealand’s response in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic display a masterclass of resilience and agility.

Read more: If border restrictions increase to combat new COVID-19 strains, what rights do returning New Zealanders have?

Leaders identified the needs and drew together the most relevant people from wherever they were, cutting across organisational boundaries. The teams focused on the pressing urgency of the crisis situation, bypassing standard bureaucratic processes and instead used new streamlined rapid responses, making decisions on incomplete information.

They continuously sought out new information, leading to their realisation that official WHO guidance was inaccurate. From there they were brave enough to take a radically different approach. The success of this won international acclaim.

What now?

Now though, there are two serious dangers for New Zealand. The first is a critical challenge that is common to most major disruptions. It is the transition from the initial crisis stage to the longer phase of managing the ongoing disruption.

With earthquakes, this was the shift from the emergency “search and rescue” crisis response phase, to the longer recovery phase and rebuilding. The new phase is definitely not “business as usual”.

It requires special expertise and high levels of adaptability, to perceive and address the changes in a continuously evolving situation.

The second risk occurs when a group has been successful. Recent accounts show one of the key weaknesses in nations that performed less well in the early phases of the pandemic was a misguided belief that “we have it under control”.

This serious error of judgement can follow success and cause leaders to downplay the need for urgency, steering them towards existing routines, rather than the creative responses the new situation demands.

Living with the pandemic

The key question now is what sort of approach is currently guiding New Zealand’s handling of this phase of the pandemic?

It should involve an ongoing, dynamic way of learning that continuously seeks out and takes on board new information, foreseeing and anticipating threats and challenges before they eventuate.

But commentaries suggest those vital elements may have been replaced by a “maintenance mode”. The partnership between public leaders and scientists, one of the hallmarks of the initial crisis phase, appears to have waned.

Well known scientists have repeatedly highlighted shortfalls in the MIQ system, but those warnings do not seem to be acted on, despite other countries having already addressed them.

Australia, for example, introduced mandatory saliva testing of MIQ staff in November but New Zealand has only just commenced voluntary saliva testing, an approach epidemiologist Sir David Skegg said was madness.

The consequences of those shortfalls become highly foreseeable, and when an error occurs the response is instead characterised by an after-the-fact, reactive approach.

There are many knowledgeable and talented people working in handling the pandemic but research shows this is not enough. It also requires leadership that creates a mode of working that involves flexibility, with constant learning and adaptation, taking on board new insights to alter ways of operating, pre-empting and averting threats.

Keeping the trust

Managing pandemic border controls is a high-hazard, high-risk area. As with aviation or running major power systems, a slight error can have enormous consequences.

There are well recognised approaches such as “high-reliability organisations” (those experienced in managing high risk, such as air traffic control or nuclear power) that could be implemented, featuring tight controls and consistency, as well as the ability to anticipate threats through continuous learning.

The organisational and management sciences are well established. The issue now is applying those principles.

Read more: Why the COVID-19 variants are so dangerous and how to stop them spreading

Any new outbreak will have major health, economic and social costs. But there will also be another significant casualty.

Until now, politicians and public health officials have been able to draw on their social capital, the trust they have earned. But that trust is conditional.

If leaders are seen as failing to act and letting foreseeable failures happen, that has the potential to seriously weaken the collective support and compliance that is absolutely pivotal for current public health measures.

– ref. NZ needs an evolving pandemic strategy if it’s to keep the public’s trust – https://theconversation.com/nz-needs-an-evolving-pandemic-strategy-if-its-to-keep-the-publics-trust-154053

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Irwin, Emeritus professor, Murdoch University

While we continue to be occupied with the COVID pandemic, another life-threatening disease has emerged in northern Australia, one that’s cause for considerable alarm for the millions of dog owners around the country.

This disease — canine ehrlichiosis — is transmitted through the bite of a bacterium-carrying parasite called the “brown dog tick”. This vector parasite is widespread in warm and humid areas of Australia, and its bite can be potentially fatal for dogs.

Until the first cases were recently discovered last May, Australia was considered free of the disease. However, more than 300 dogs in Western Australia and the Northern Territory have now tested positive for it. There have also been reports from veterinary workers in the field of dogs dying without being tested or treated.

And it’s spreading — infected ticks that carry the deadly bacteria have been detected in South Australia, according to Mark Schipp, Australia’s chief veterinary officer. If you own a dog, it’s vital you take precautions to protect it as the outbreak is unlikely to be controlled any time soon.

Fever, lethargy and uncontrollable bleeding

Canine ehrlichiosis is caused by a bacterium called Ehrlichia canis (E. canis) carried by the tick. It first came to the attention of veterinary scientists in the 1960-1970s after affecting scores of military working dogs, often German Shepherds, in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

In Australia today, the disease appears most prevalent in regional areas and remote communities in WA and NT, where the ability to test dogs is restricted for logistical reasons. In some areas, such as communities in the Roper Gulf Shire, testing and treating dogs can be impossible during the wet season as severe flooding can prevent veterinarians from accessing the region.

However, with the detection of ticks in South Australia, veterinarians are concerned they could travel to more populous areas.

When an infected tick bites a dog, the bacterium enters white blood cells and multiplies rapidly, causing signs of illness the owner will only first notice about two weeks after transmission.

The disease is characterised by fever, decreased appetite, lethargy and bleeding (such as nose bleeds). Some dogs develop severe and rapid weight loss, swollen limbs, difficulty in breathing and blindness.

One of the most serious effects of this disease is on the bone marrow, which can be fatal. Some dogs die of septicaemia as they can no longer fight off even the most innocuous of infections, or they bleed uncontrollably, which can also lead to death.

Ticks expanding southward

Every pet owner who has travelled into Australia with their dogs would know about the stringent testing procedures in place to ensure their canine companions do not bring canine ehrlichiosis into the country. This is especially important since the brown dog tick (the vector) has been in northern Australia for many years, but not with this particular infection.

As with other serious animal diseases screened by biosecurity authorities, such as African Swine Fever and Screw Worm Fly, the bacterium E. canis is highly prevalent in tropical regions, including our closest northern neighbours (Indonesia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea) and the Pacific Islands.

However, our 2016 research shows a southwards expansion of the brown dog tick’s geographical range. The reasons why aren’t fully understood, but may include increased pet travel around the country and possibly also climate change.

Worse, the tick is also well adapted to indoor living and readily establishes within kennels or homes, and even in cooler climates. These conditions mean E. canis can spread to most parts of Australia.

Protecting your best friend

Just as our health authorities have been with COVID-19, the response from the state and federal veterinary authorities to this outbreak of canine ehrlichiosis has been swift.

Most dogs will improve from treatment with antibiotics and other supportive measures. However, some may develop a chronic infection, which usually has a terminal outcome.

The disease isn’t contagious; only dogs bitten by the ticks will contract it. So it’s vital animal owners are proactive with the application of parasite prevention.

Owners should seek advice from their veterinarian about which products will protect their dogs from contracting this disease. Research has shown those that repel ticks and stop them attaching in the first place, such as effective tick collars, are the best way to prevent canine ehrlichiosis.

Important questions remain

Since the first Australian cases of canine ehrlichiosis were diagnosed, veterinary practitioners have raised questions about how the disease arrived (considering our border controls), as well as how it’s likely to play out in the future.

Was the infection carried into Australia by a dog travelling from an endemic country, or was there an undetected incursion of the contaminated tick itself? If this were the case, there are implications for other, potentially far more serious diseases, such as rabies, entering the continent in a similar manner.

And when exactly did the infection arrive? To be so widespread now would seem to imply its presence for quite some time, possibly several years.

Finally, what are the implications of this disease spilling over to other animals — and humans – in Australia? It would seem our native marsupials are in no danger from this disease; however, the potential impact on dingoes is unknown.

A similar, rare disease in humans — called “human monocytic ehrlichiosis” (HME) — is caused by a different, closely related bacterium (Ehrlichia chaffeensis) and is characterised by fever, chill, headache, nausea and weight loss. However, one study in Venezuela revealed 30% of humans with HME were infected with a strain of E. canis.

HME isn’t known to occur in Australia, and the potential for E. canis to cause illness in humans here is currently unknown.

The discovery of E. canis in Australia reminds us of the importance of quarantine measures to protect our pets, just as we take such measures seriously for the protection of humans.

Read more: How to help dogs and cats manage separation anxiety when their humans return to work

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Australia’s Chief Veterinary Officer Dr Mark Schipp to this article.

– ref. Protect your dog from this new deadly disease outbreak. We still don’t know how it got here – https://theconversation.com/protect-your-dog-from-this-new-deadly-disease-outbreak-we-still-dont-know-how-it-got-here-153794

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cath Ferguson, Academic, Edith Cowan University

Almost half of Australian adults struggle with reading. Similar levels of struggling readers are reported in the United Kingdom and United States.

This does not mean all struggling readers are illiterate. It means they often struggle to understand writing in a way required for broad participation in work, education and training, and society.

Our recent analysis of government information on COVID-19 found many documents were written in a way that is inaccessible to struggling readers.

If adults do not understand key health messages, they are unlikely to comply with health directives that can protect themselves and the rest of the population.

Difficulty with reading

There are many reasons adults can struggle with reading. They include English being their second language, having had long or many absences from school, home factors, student attitudes and engagement, school and systems factors, and learning difficulties and disabilities.

People who have difficulty reading information may miss out on key health messages about COVID-19.

This could lead to poor health outcomes for themselves and others. This is because many of the health messages, such as the importance of wearing a face mask and social distancing, require individual action for community benefit.

Read more: We’re not all in this together. Messages about social distancing need the right cultural fit

We analysed the content of online government documents (federal and Western Australian) related to COVID-19 to determine how hard this information was to read. We chose government pages because we expect them to provide reliable information.

The website pages we selected clearly indicated they were for the general public — such as a page with the heading “information and advice on the COVID-19 coronavirus for the community and businesses in Western Australia”.

To be accessible to the general population documents should have a reading ability requirement of year 8. This means the health messages governments share should be understandable for someone in year 8 or lower in Australia.

What we found

We used an online readability checker to analyse the documents we accessed. Readability scores are based on the number of words in a sentence, the number of syllables in the words and the number of sentences in the document.

The documents we analysed had an average readability of grade 13, which is very difficult to read for many adults. The range of readability scores was from grade 8 to grade 26.

Only two of the 52 documents could be read with relative ease, as these were assessed at grade 8. But no document in the set we analysed was easy to read. An easy-to-read document would have had a score of grade 6.

Read more: Young men are more likely to believe COVID-19 myths. So how do we actually reach them?

For example, here is a difficult sentence explaining what the public needs to know about moving from one phase of restrictions to another. It is from one of the government websites. The document from which it was taken scored at grade 24 (very difficult to read).

Phase 3 will be subject to health advice, but will focus on continuing to build stronger links within the community and include further resumption of commercial and recreational activities.

There are 29 words in the above sentence.

As you can see, it is quite a long sentence with a number of big words. Without losing its original meaning, the sentence can be simplified into 18 words.

Based on health advice, Phase 3 will include connecting with community, opening businesses and allowing some personal activities.

The words we used are more common and therefore more easy to understand. Words such as “resumption” may be too hard for many readers.

What does this mean?

Based on the sample of documents we assessed, it appears a lot of government-produced COVID-19 information is not easy to read. This means it is unlikely to be of much practical use.

Our findings suggest governments are failing to take into account that many adults struggle to read when they develop important online communications about the pandemic — and perhaps other health advice.

Read more: Viral spiral: the federal government is playing a risky game with mixed messages on coronavirus

If those who create health messages don’t take into account that many adults struggle with reading, a large portion of the population misses out on information important for individual and public health.

We recommend readability checkers, now freely available on the internet, be used to check the grade level at which government documents are written.

Governments have a responsibility to share information so everyone can access it. They should not assume failure to comply with public health measures is always a choice. It’s possible the message simply hasn’t been received.

– ref. Most government information on COVID-19 is too hard for the average Australian to understand – https://theconversation.com/most-government-information-on-covid-19-is-too-hard-for-the-average-australian-to-understand-153878

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abbas Shieh, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Design, Islamic Azad University

The industrial revolution transformed cities, resulting in places of residence and work becoming more distant than ever before. This spatial segregation is still largely embedded in the design of our cities today.

But the COVID-19 pandemic might have brought our cities to a similarly dramatic turning point. Working from home has received a far-reaching fillip. Our pre-COVID survey of 277 remote-working employee and self-employed Australians shows most had a separate workspace for telework and generally felt satisfied with their home-work environment.

Read more: If more of us work from home after coronavirus we’ll need to rethink city planning

But levels of satisfaction among workers in home-based settings vary. We identified some key factors to explain these differences.

Teleworkers’ work motivation increased with:

• having a higher income

• being a single parent with children

• living in an apartment

• satisfaction with workspace size

• quality of home office equipment

• the mobility of owning a private vehicle.

For Australian sole parents, who are more likely to be women than men, telework at home can be an efficient and smart way of working. While having more time at home for caring responsibilities, they can work and earn money for household expenses.

Living and working in apartments can provide more opportunities for social interaction. It can also enable more efficient use of energy, lowering costs. Apartments and units are more likely to be located in higher-density urban areas, which offer better access to office and business services and other amenities.

At the same time, there were factors that decreased teleworkers’ motivation, including:

• being in full-time employment

• complicated corporate protocols

• shorter time living in the current residence

• feelings of isolation and distraction

• having convenient access to public transport.

Access to public transport might seem counterintuitive but while enabling work-related journeys it also promotes more engagement outside the home, distractions to some extent, and so fewer feelings of isolation. Work-life balance at this micro-scale also has to be negotiated individually.

Read more: COVID impacts demand a change of plan: funding a shift from commuting to living locally

Home workplace qualities neglected

The pandemic has given new impetus to the critical rethinking of dispersed urbanisation that dates back to the sharp rise in energy prices in the early 1970s. The idea of working from home re-emerged at the dawn of the telecommunications revolution early in the 1980s.

Read more: Fancy an e-change? How people are escaping city congestion and living costs by working remotely

Our latest collective experience of working from home has brought into sharp relief both the pitfalls and the positives.

The academic literature on telework from fields such as organisational psychology focuses on maximising economic and logistical efficiency. Many studies ignore the positive and negative effects being in the home has on the worker.

Read more: How might COVID-19 change what Australians want from their homes?

How to improve support for telework

To date, organisational and managerial policies have been contradictory. There are public and private organisational guidelines and supportive government tax policies to encourage teleworking. These cover matters such as ergonomics and utilities (internet, electricity and technology).

But these policies do not practically or adequately support teleworkers’ access to appropriate conditions. Teleworkers can still be left alone with a host of problems and personal challenges.

Many of these issues are rooted in place-related factors. For example, although Australian tax-deduction policies cover internet, electricity and technology costs, they do not cover the capital costs of home renovations made to provide a home office or telework space. Yet these modifications are of great importance for successfully working from home.

Read more: Coronavirus could spark a revolution in working from home. Are we ready?

The OECD has recognised the risk of policies over-promoting teleworking for economic gains. The negative consequences, such as increased social isolation, distraction and work-family conflict, mainly affect the most vulnerable social groups. They include sole parents, people with disabilities and older people.

Based on our research, the government should:

• encourage formal agreements for working from home

• support modification of homes for telework for vulnerable social groups

• develop opportunities in small regional cities

• encourage more compact cities

• develop public shared work offices and spaces at the local level.

These policy suggestions are consistent with many recent Australian urban development trends.

Read more: How COVID all but killed the Australian CBD

A smart city or a wise city?

Teleworking seems set to become a more entrenched work practice than ever before. Yet factors such as the impacts of home and place on human motivation have not been dealt with.

Over time, if governments want to encourage telework, our cities will need to change. Resources and infrastructure will need to be localised where people live – and increasingly work domestically – and not just in centralised employment districts.

Read more: Coronavirus reminds us how liveable neighbourhoods matter for our well-being

– ref. COVID is keeping us in our homes, but what makes working there a success or failure? – https://theconversation.com/covid-is-keeping-us-in-our-homes-but-what-makes-working-there-a-success-or-failure-151566

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Review: Occupation: Rainfall, written and directed by Luke Sparke

Historically, when a sequel to a film was greenlit, you could rest assured this was because the first film made a tidy profit for its investors. With the advent of streaming services like Netflix, this is no longer necessarily the case. And Occupation: Rainfall shows us this.

Occupation (2018) made barely anything at the box office or through international sales, and yet became a surprise hit on Netflix in the US. Writer-director Luke Sparke was able to leverage this success to fund this sequel.

Although it has a much bigger budget, Occupation: Rainfall is marginally worse than its predecessor.

Occupation was able to make the most of its dramatically compelling narrative of a group of survivors banding together to resist an alien invasion, and the new film takes off where Occupation ended. It’s two years after the first film, and the war between “the resistance” and the “greys” (the aliens) rages on.

Its main narrative follows Matt Simmons (Dan Ewing) and alien Gary (Lawrence Makoare) as they travel from Sydney to Alice Springs to find out about “Rainfall,” an alien super weapon sent to Earth eons earlier. On the way, they pick up Peter Bartlett (Temuera Morrison) who presides over a rural community established in the first film.

Meanwhile, Wing Commander Hayes (Daniel Gillies) oversees a giant underground resistance compound, performing secret evil experiments on captured aliens in order to develop a weapon that will win the war.

Virtuous Amelia Chambers (Jet Tranter) takes up her own war against Hayes, and the epic existential war between aliens and humans is mirrored in these internal tensions within the resistance.

The whole thing is bookended by two drawn out, noisy battle sequences between the humans and aliens.

If you haven’t seen the first film, it all seems fairly shrill and incomprehensible.

A failure of spectacle

There are fantastic alien invasion films that make the most of the conflicts between different species, and, in this, say something interesting and original about life on Earth.

John Carpenter’s cult hit They Live (1988) brilliantly critiques American class inequality through its exploration of invasion, and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) says more about the atomic age at the beginning of the Cold War than virtually any other film of the period.

Then there are the more tedious variety: epic war films in which the antagonists happen to look weird and talk in a weird way. These can be effectively done, as in Starship Troopers (1997), but Occupation: Rainfall just does not have the budget to fulfil its premise.

And without a sufficient budget, this kind of epic cinematic spectacle inevitably fails.

A budget of A$25 million makes it, by Australian standards, a very well resourced film (Occupation was made for A$6 million). But Occupation: Rainfall tries to emulate its much bigger-budgeted brethren like Avatar (2009), made for US$237 million, rather than making its own mark. And this will always be a losing game when it comes to economies of scale.

The visual effects here may have been passable 25 years ago (and look at about the level of the Australian TV show Spellbinder (1995-97) in places), but are laughably bad by contemporary standards.

The spaceships attacking Sydney in the opening battle sequence look like they’ve been rendered using Paint 3D, and we can never suspend our disbelief when looking at the alien companion animals accompanying Matt and Gary on their trip.

For some projects this wouldn’t matter, but building a convincing and immersive world is absolutely critical for this kind of fantasy narrative.

Occupation: Rainfall just doesn’t use its budget creatively or effectively – unlike, for example, Leigh Whannell’s superb Australian science-fiction film Upgrade (2018), with a budget of less than a third of Occupation: Rainfall.

Light and dark

The narrative is unclear and underdrawn. The relationships between the humans and the aliens is never clearly delineated. There are no clear back stories to the characters that might anchor viewers to the world (unlike a film like Alien Nation (1988), which treads similar territory).

It’s not all bad. Aspects of the design are good – there’s an appealing colourfully kitsch quality to the lighting – and the main narrative structure of a pair of mismatched buddies travelling across country facing numerous hazards will always be a winner.

The look of the greys is appealingly bodgie – their costumes and laser guns look like objects your mum might have made you for book week in the 1980s – and Dan Gillies and Temuera Morrison give strikingly assured performances.

But the strength of these actors backfires in terms of the film as a whole, as we become acutely aware of the Home and Away-ish acting of most of the supporting cast. This was a big enough film to throw Ken Jeong in at the end once they reach Pine Gap, but even his comic relief seems lame, doing little to improve the film.

The bigger-than-usual budget for an Australian film also plays against Occupation: Rainfall: it makes one painfully aware of the waste. Imagine how many better films could have been made with this money!

It is great to see a sincere genre film coming out of Australia. But Occupation: Rainfall becomes tedious pretty quickly. Given its colonial history, it would seem Australia is primed for a thoughtful, well-made film about alien invasion. This is not it.

Occupation: Rainfall is in Australian cinemas now

– ref. Occupation: Rainfall review: Australia is primed for a well-made alien invasion film. This is not it – https://theconversation.com/occupation-rainfall-review-australia-is-primed-for-a-well-made-alien-invasion-film-this-is-not-it-153379

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Nationals who attend Thursday’s memorial service in Tweed Heads for Doug Anthony, who died last month aged 90, may muse on the contrast between the state of their party when he led it and now.

Anthony took over the then Country party from the legendary John McEwen in 1971; he served as deputy prime minister under John Gorton (briefly), William McMahon, and throughout the Fraser government.

He held the powerful trade portfolio, now out of the Nationals’ hands.

Most importantly, the junior Coalition partner in those days had not just a strong leader effective at juggling his party’s interests with those of the joint team, but an extremely forceful troika – including heavy hitters Ian Sinclair and Peter Nixon – in the upper reaches of government. The party was also united.

Today the Nationals have an embattled leader and a fractured party. They are tolerated rather than respected by the Liberals. For Scott Morrison they are more problem than asset.

As has been on show this week, which has seen sprays from former leader Barnaby Joyce and a renewed push for government support for new coal-fired power.

Joyce, who was forced to quit the leadership in early 2018 in a blaze of bad publicity over his personal life, wrote in The Australian on Wednesday that “the Coalition has devolved into a marriage of convenience that diminishes the electoral prospects of the whole Coalition”.

Amomg his complaints is that the Liberals “allocate the substantial portfolios and [committee] chairs exclusively to themselves”.

“Would the Nationals’ doyen, John ‘Black Jack’ McEwen, have accepted this? This needs to be corrected prior to an election, which I presume will be at the end of this year.”

Joyce pointed to symbolism as well as substance. “In question time to the right of the dispatch box, where the Prime Minister sits, is no longer the Deputy Prime Minister, leader of the Nationals, but the Treasurer. He moved into the picture recently with the COVID pandemic and it does not look like he is for moving out of the frame.”

Joyce’s reference to McEwen is a less-than-subtle crack at Michael McCormack. Joyce and his supporters are deeply frustrated not just with McCormack’s leadership but also by the fact they haven’t been able to get rid of him, which is not for want of trying.

One of Morrison’s periodic challenges is to prop up the position of his deputy prime minister. For example, in considering a legal issue last year, Morrison overrode the preference of Attorney-General Christian Porter to side with strident Nationals, fearing to do otherwise could undermine McCormack.

Morrison has wanted to avoid the disruption in government ranks that would come with the overthrow of McCormack.

Also, what dissidents Nationals see as a negative – McCormack’s pliancy – is for Morrison a positive. Basically, McCormack doesn’t kick up within the Coalition.

He does, however, stuff up from time to time. Like when he was recently acting PM and sparked controversy with his comments about the insurrection in Washington, comparing “the events at the Capitol Hill” “to those race riots that we saw around the country last year.”

Read more: Why is it so offensive to say ‘all lives matter’?

With the usual provisos about the uncertainties of politics, McCormack is expected to lead into the election. The heir is not Joyce, despite his aspirations, but the party’s deputy leader, Agriculture minister David Littleproud – and it’s in Littleproud’s interests to wait.

But it is telling that Nationals sources (not from the dissidents) say McCormack’s position would not be guaranteed post election even if the party held its seats.

At the start of a year when Morrison will be under international and domestic pressure over climate policy, the Nationals’ backbench manufacturing committee is hyping up the coal debate. The committee is chaired by former resources minister Matt Canavan, close ally of Joyce and an outspoken rebel.

The committee’s policy paper says: “Australia needs to build modern coal fired power stations to help manufacturing industries. That is why the Nationals Party backs the delivery of a coal fired power station at Collinsville in North Queensland.

“But more will need to be built. Given that the NSW Government has recently announced plans to shut 8520 megawatts of coal fired power (representing 70 per cent of the electricity of NSW), the Government should also support a new coal fired power station in the Hunter Valley.

“This would use the world’s best and cleanest thermal coal. It would be better for the environment for more Australian coal to be used to manufacture goods in Australia, instead of Australians importing manufactured goods from countries that use lower quality coals.”

While the federal government has a feasibility study underway for a possible coal-fired plant at Collinsville, it does not expect there will be a viable case made out for the project.

As for the Hunter region, Morrison’s energy pitch is all about gas, not coal.

The battle on the conservative side of politics over climate and energy issues is nothing like as feral as in Malcolm Turnbull’s time. But Morrison still has to watch potential dissenters – and at present the most unmanageable voices seem to be in the Nationals rather than in the Liberals.

– ref. View from The Hill: Coal push from Nationals is a challenge for Scott Morrison – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-coal-push-from-nationals-is-a-challenge-for-scott-morrison-154078

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlyn Forster, PhD Candidate, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

This summer’s wetter conditions have created great conditions for flowering plants. Flowers provide sweet nectar and protein-rich pollen, attracting many insects, including bees.

Commercial honey bees are also thriving: the New South Wales population has reportedly bounced back after the drought and bushfires

While you may have seen a lot of bees around lately, there’s no reason to be afraid. Most bees are only aggressive when provoked, and some don’t sting at all. And some bee-like insects are actually flies.

We are experts on honey bee and other insect behaviour. So let’s look at which bees to watch out for, and how to avoid being stung this summer.

Is it a bee, or a wanna-bee?

Bees in Australia comprise both introduced and native species.

Invasive bees found in Australia, all of which can sting, include the widespread European honeybees, bumble bees in Tasmania, and Asian honey bees in Queensland.

Read more: The mystery of the blue flower: nature’s rare colour owes its existence to bee vision

Australia is also home to about 2,000 native bees, including 11 stingless species.

Stingless bees live in colonies and produce honey. Other native species, such as blue banded bees and leaf cutter bees, are capable of stinging but are rarely aggressive.

Some insects we see around flowers are actually harmless hoverflies. But their yellow and black stripes mean they are often mistaken for bees.

Bees out and about

Bees on flowers are usually more interested in the food they’re collecting than the people around them. However, if you’re concerned about encountering one on your morning walk or in the garden, there are simple ways to mitigate the risk.

Bees sting when they feel threatened. So when you see one, move slowly and keep your distance. If bees fly close to you, avoid sudden movements such as swatting them away.

And wear closed shoes where bees might fly close to the ground, such as around clover or fallen jacaranda flowers.

What if I see a swarm?

In spring and into summer, healthy honeybee colonies may reproduce by dividing into two. One part of the colony stays at the hive and the other goes looking for a new home.

Worker bees and the queen bee leave the hive in a swarm and find a spot to stay temporarily while scout bees find a new home. That’s when you might see a swarm on a tree, vehicle or building.

Once scout bees find a new home, they return to the swarm and communicate the location via the “waggle dance”. Once a sufficient number of scouts agree on a new nest site, the swarm lifts into the air and flies to its new home.

Read more: Curious Kids: how do bees make honey?

Don’t panic if you encounter a stationary swarm of bees. The bees will sting only if threatened. But keep your distance.

Moving swarms can pose a higher sting risk, and should be avoided. If you encounter one, move a safe distance away, or indoors if possible. When moving away, avoid fast movements or swatting.

Swarms are usually present for a few hours or days before they move to a permanent location. If the bees are in a risky location (for example, near a footpath or other busy areas), call a beekeeper to safely remove them.

Stingless native bees swarm for two reasons: mating and fighting.

Mating swarms involve males congregating outside a hive to mate with the queen. Fighting swarms occur when a colony of stingless bees attempts to invade another colony. They do not usually pose a risk to humans.

Native bees capable of stinging are solitary, so don’t swarm. However, male solitary bees are known to group together on branches in the evening.

When a bee sting happens

Death and serious injury from bee stings is rare. But in Australia, bees are responsible for more hospital visits than snakes or spiders. European honeybees are also responsible for more allergic reactions than any other insect.

Only female bees can sting. Honeybees can only sting once, and die shortly after. This is because their stinger is barbed – once it stings something, the bee can’t pull the stinger out. Instead the stinger pulls free from the bee’s abdomen and the bee dies.

Other species can sting multiple times because their stingers are not barbed.

When a bee’s stinger enters your skin, it injects venom from a sac on its abdomen. When this happens, you’re likely to experience temporary swelling and redness.

For most people, reactions to bee venom are shortlived. To limit the amount of venom injected by the bee, quickly remove the sting using the edge of your fingernail or credit card.

In some cases, stings can lead to severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. If you think you may have an allergy to bee stings, speak to your doctor.

And seek medical advice if you are stung in the face or neck, if significant swelling occurs or if you develop symptoms such as wheezing, light-headedness or dizziness.

Learning to like bees

Bees and other insects play an important role in our food production, by moving pollen from one plant to another. They do a similar job in your garden, helping flowers and fruits to flourish.

But worldwide, bees and other pollinators face many threats, including climate change, misuse of pesticides and habitat loss. We must do what we can to keep pollinator populations healthy.

So if you’re out and about and see a bee, or even a swarm, try not to panic. The bees are probably focused on the job at hand, and not interested in you at all.

Read more: ‘Jewel of nature’: scientists fight to save a glittering green bee after the summer fires

– ref. It’s bee season. To avoid getting stung, just stay calm and don’t swat – https://theconversation.com/its-bee-season-to-avoid-getting-stung-just-stay-calm-and-dont-swat-153625